Nigerian president’s solar panels stir debate over renewables for the rich

Solar systems are a solution to Nigeria’s frequent power cuts and inadequate grid coverage – but only for those who can afford them

Nigeria’s presidential villa is being kitted out with a $6-million solar mini-grid – a pricey solution to erratic power supplies that small business manager Victor Onyim can only dream of as he grapples with near-daily power cuts.

For more than two weeks until early May, Onyim’s drinking water company and other businesses in the southern city of Port Harcourt struggled to keep operating due to a total blackout blamed by the local power utility on vandalism. It has since been resolved, but regular outages continue.

“The lack of light (electricity) is affecting our business. We have not been making sales since the power issue,” he told Climate Home, gesturing towards the half-empty stock room and idle delivery trucks parked at the front of the plant in the country’s oil-rich Niger Delta region.

To keep the business afloat during the recent outage, Onyim spent 30,000 naira ($18) daily on diesel and was forced to halt production at midday to reduce the fuel bill, sending workers home early.

“Substituting the light from the grid with generators … is better than not having light at all,” he said.

Generators far cheaper than solar

The whirr of generators is a common sound in Nigeria, where the national power grid is prone to frequent failures, plagued by creaky and poorly maintained infrastructure despite repeated pledges by governments over the years to tackle it.

While those who can afford it are starting to install solar panels and storage batteries to bypass grid supplies, poorer Nigerians have no option but to stretch household budgets to buy fuel – to supply generators – kerosene lamps and candles for lighting and bottled gas for cooking. 

Petrol and diesel generators remain the favoured alternative for power generation. While the fuel is an extra running cost, a small petrol generator can be bought for as little as 120,000 naira ($74).

It costs roughly five times more than that – 600,000 naira ($323) – to buy just one solar panel with an inverter battery. The minimum monthly wage in Nigeria is 70,000 naira ($45).

Leapfrogging straight to renewables

In much of Africa, where an estimated 600 million people still have no access at all to mains electricity, leapfrogging straight to solar power would boost power access while also reducing the need for fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil and coal to generate electricity.

Nigeria’s power sector is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, with gas accounting for over three-quarters of electricity generated in 2022, hydropower delivering about a quarter, and renewables less than 1%.

But high solar system installation costs are a huge hurdle, particularly in the poorer rural areas that would stand to gain the most – access to electricity, in many cases for the first time.

Almost half of Nigeria’s roughly 230 million people live without access to electricity from the grid – making it the country with the highest number of people lacking it globally. 

Even for those who are connected to the grid, dilapidated transmission infrastructure, vandalism and inadequate maintenance resources mean the supply is unreliable, raising the appeal of self-contained solar systems – even for the country’s leader.

In Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa, solar booms have been driven by power cuts prompting those who can afford to invest in reliable solar electricity. However, this is usually a fraction of the majority. The 2025 Africa Solar Outlook report found that commercial and industrial users made up a large part of the installations in 2024. 

Renewables for the rich?

With few signs of improvement in Nigeria’s power supply, civil society campaigners have criticised the government’s approval of the multi-million-dollar solar system at the sprawling Aso Rock presidential residence in the capital, Abuja.

A spokesperson for President Bola Tinubu said the initial investment would soon be clawed back through savings on electricity bills.

But solar for the rich, and government officials, is not the equitable shift to greener electricity that Africa’s policymakers should be working to implement, said Joshua Alade, founder of Network of Youth for Sustainable Initiative, a youth-led civil society organisation based in Nigeria.

“This current trend of renewables being accessible mainly to the affluent is far from what we advocate for,” Alade said, adding that government efforts to foster renewable energy must focus on vulnerable communities “historically left behind by traditional energy systems”.

Nigeria’s power crisis perpetuates deep economic inequalities in Africa’s most populous country, with smaller businesses and micro enterprises like Onyim’s in Port Harcourt less able to cope with the blackouts.

According to estimates by the World Bank, unreliable electricity supplies cost the Nigerian economy $29 billion a year. 

Clean energy investments are growing – slowly

Investments in renewable energy in Africa are growing, but too slowly to put the continent on track to reach its sustainable development goals, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). 

Clean energy investments in Africa account for just 2% of the global total, the IEA said in its latest World Energy Investment Analysis report, adding that as they stand, energy investments are equivalent to only 1.2% of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Efforts to tackle Africa’s power access gap, and boosting renewable energy generation at the same time, are the focus of initiatives such as Mission300, a joint effort of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank.

The programme, which aims to get power supplies to 300 million people – half of the number without electricity access in Africa – by 2030, raised over $50 billion in pledges of support earlier this year at a meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Ensuring green power shift benefits all

For the initiative to succeed where others have failed, Nigeria-based energy expert Teslim Giwa said African governments must place greater emphasis on the economic benefits of improving – and widening access to – electricity.

In order to ensure lower-income communities are reached, he called for policies including subsidies on products such as solar panels and batteries for storage and discounted electricity bills for the poorest people. 

Community ownership of clean electricity initiatives – for example, solar mini-grids in neighbourhoods – should also be promoted, Giwa said, adding that the approach would help prevent vandalism and stop infrastructure falling into disrepair.

Back in Port Harcourt’s Rumuokwachi district, not far from Onyim’s water packaging plant, welder Bright Azuka hunches over a steel gate, sparks flying as his welding machine crackles to life. 

The hum of a generator can be heard in the background as he works swiftly, racing to finish a job before it runs out of fuel. Azuka spends 10,000 naira ($7) per day on petrol so he can carry on working during power outages.

He urged President Tinubu’s government to find ways of making solar systems more affordable for ordinary Nigerians like him.

“Even though I don’t have electricity here, I am paying monthly bills,” he said. “It’s not easy.”

Cover photo:  South African students install solar panels on their school in 2010 (Photo: Nicholas Fojtu/Greenpeace)