The Bank of Industry, BoI, announced on Wednesday that it had provided electricity to about 1,200 rural households and businesses using solar energy.
Olukayode Pitan, managing director of the bank, disclosed at the 2017 Africa Today Summit in Abuja, themed, ‘Energy options in a low-cost and a low-carbon world: Which way Nigeria and Africa?’, that the households and businesses were currently benefiting from its off-grid rural electrification project.
Pitan said the deployment of solar power solutions by the firm had boosted the operation of various small and medium businesses across the geo-polical zones of the country. He added that the ongoing access to renewable energy project being piloted in some selected rural communities across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria was financed by the bank in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme.
Represented by Waheed Olagunju, Pitan said the six renewable energy projects located in Gombe, Anambra, Niger, Osun, Kaduna, and Edo states had all been inaugurated.
He said, “Our pilot solar project that we financed to the tune of N240 million has been inaugurated and the developmental impact on those six locations is quite enormous. The project is run on pay-as-you-go basis.
“The rural people go to the installations in their environment; they pay and they are given a code and load the code on their system. Almost about 1,200 houses have been connected, as well as many other businesses and they are doing quite well.”