11/03/2026
A*o Rock Goes Solar: Fact, Irony, and What It Means for Nigeria.
The Federal Government is set to disconnect A*o Rock Villa from the national grid this March — but is this a win, or a quiet admission of failure?
A viral news headline has been making rounds across Nigerian social media: "A*o Rock To Disconnect From National Grid This March, Switch Fully To Solar Power." Many Nigerians reacted with a mix of outrage, laughter, and bitter resignation. But how true is it? We did the digging, and here is what we found.
Yes, A*o Rock Villa — Nigeria's seat of presidential power — is preparing to cut ties with the national electricity grid and run entirely on solar energy. This was confirmed by none other than the State House Permanent Secretary, Temitope Fashedemi, while defending the State House's 2026 budget before the Senate Committee on Special Duties.
According to Fashedemi, the solar installation at the Villa was completed toward the end of 2025 and has been undergoing technical evaluation since December. He stated that a full cutover was expected by March 2026 — though he used the word "hopeful," which signals a target rather than a guarantee.
This is where it gets interesting. The Federal Government budgeted a whopping ₦10 billion for the Villa's solar mini-grid project in 2025. And if that was not enough, another ₦7 billion has been proposed in the 2026 budget. That is a combined ₦17 billion of public funds — your tax money — dedicated solely to powering the Presidential Villa with solar energy.
Officials justified the investment partly on financial grounds: the Villa's annual electricity bill had been estimated at ₦47 billion, and before the solar plan, electricity debts at the complex had climbed close to ₦1 billion. From a purely economic angle for the government, the solar project makes financial sense. But for millions of Nigerians still sitting in darkness for up to 20 hours a day, the optics tell a very different story.
To be fair, the solar transition has already shown results at a smaller scale. The State House Medical Centre has reportedly not relied on generator power since installing its own solar infrastructure back in May 2025. Officials noted that only about 3% of the Medical Centre's energy needs were briefly supplemented from the grid during the early months of the transition. That is a genuine operational win — even if it is happening inside the walls of an elite government complex.
Let us not dance around the elephant in the room. President Bola Tinubu promised Nigerians constant electricity. Three years into his administration, the national grid remains cripplingly unreliable. Entire states go dark for days. Businesses are closing or relocating due to energy costs. Small business owners spend more on diesel than on rent.
So when the government announces that A*o Rock is going off-grid to solve its own power problem with billions of naira — while ordinary Nigerians continue to manage with generators, candles, and frustrated prayers — the outrage is not irrational. It is, in fact, the most reasonable response.
As one critic put it online: "They could not fix light for us, so they fixed it for themselves." That sentiment, however blunt, captures the mood of millions.
Nigeria deserves better than a government that solves its own problems while leaving citizens behind. The A*o Rock solar project might be good engineering. But it is terrible politics and even worse optics.
*oRock
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