IN Nigeria’s tertiary hospitals, a power cut is rarely just an inconvenience. It is a canceled surgery. It is a vaccine batch ruined. It is a baby in an incubator fighting against time. For years, that was the reality. Solar panels were installed, celebrated, and then quietly left to decay. Generators gulped diesel and drained budgets. And when the lights went out, clinicians improvised.
On Wednesday in Abuja, the Federal Government said that cycle ends now. With the official launch of the Renewable Asset Management Company, RAMCO, the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Isaiah Adekunle Salako, called the new entity “the definitive institutional solution to eliminate recurring power failures in Nigeria’s healthcare facilities.
”“It is not enough to commission projects,” Salako said at the event hosted by the Rural Electrification Agency, REA. “In hospitals, electricity powers operating theatres, intensive care units, laboratories, blood banks, vaccine refrigerators and the equipment that keeps mothers and children alive. When electricity fails, the consequence goes beyond the loss of comfort, affecting clinical time, quality of care and, in some cases, lives.
”RAMCO’s mandate is simple in concept and ambitious in scope: take ownership of Nigeria’s existing and future renewable energy assets in public institutions, manage them professionally across their entire lifecycle, and make them bankable enough to attract private capital. For a country that has lost billions of naira to abandoned infrastructure, the government is betting that RAMCO will be the difference between projects that die after commissioning, and assets that work for 20 years.
From Installation to Abandonment: The Problem RAMCO Was Built to Fix
The numbers tell a grim story. According to Dr. Salako, more than 30 percent of solar power systems previously installed in public health facilities collapsed within a few years of commissioning. The reasons were familiar: no maintenance budget, no clear owner, no plan for battery replacement, and no one accountable when inverters failed.
The same pattern repeated in universities. The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, warned at the launch that without professional management, “the Federal Government risks losing billions of naira invested in clean power projects across the country’s tertiary institutions.
”Under the REA’s Energizing Education Programme, EEP, about 70MW of clean energy has already been deployed across 15 federal universities and teaching hospitals. Phase One delivered roughly 22MW across seven sites. Phase Two added approximately 40MW across eight locations, including the University of Abuja, University of Calabar, University of Maiduguri, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigerian Defence Academy, University of Port Harcourt, Federal University of Technology Owerri, and Federal University, Kashere.At the University of Abuja, a 3.2MW installation now provides 24-hour power.
“Lecturers are heading to teach using the latest technology. The learning management system is fully functional. Research and innovation are going on uninterrupted,” Alausa said. But he cautioned: “Without this, even the best infrastructure will eventually fail to deliver the benefit for which it was established.”That “this” is RAMCO.
