Aso Rock to disconnect from nat’l grid in March – Perm Sec

The Aso Rock Presidential Villa is expected to fully disconnect from the national electricity grid by March 2026 following the completion of its solar power project, the State House Permanent Secretary, Temitope Fashedemi, has disclosed.

Fashedemi made the revelation on Wednesday while defending the State House 2026 budget before the Senate Committee on Special Duties at the National Assembly complex in Abuja.

This is according to details of the proceedings transmitted to State House correspondents by the Presidency on Wednesday evening.

He told the committee, chaired by Senator Kaka Lawan (Borno Central), that the solar installation was completed towards the end of 2025 and had been undergoing testing since December.

“We are hopeful that maybe by March we’ll be able to do a full cutover,” Fashedemi said, adding that the transition would deliver significant cost savings for the government.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Permanent Secretary cited the State House Medical Centre as proof of the project’s viability.

The facility, he argued, completed its own solar installation in May 2025 and has since operated entirely without generator power.

He stated, “I have to say that since that time, the generator in that State House Medical Centre has not been put on for one minute since May last year.

“Only a couple of months, we used three per cent from AEDC (Abuja Electricity Distribution Company), so the rest has been strictly from the solar and from the battery electric storage system.”

The Federal Government budgeted N10bn for the “Solarisation of the Villa with Solar Mini Grid” project in 2025.

The move that sparked widespread criticism from Nigerians who argued that the decision to install solar panels at Aso Rock amounted to an admission that the Tinubu administration could not fix Nigeria’s epileptic power supply.

The 2026 Appropriation Bill contains an additional N7bn allocation for the project.

However, the Director-General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, Mustapha Abdullahi, defended the project in April 2025, describing it as unsustainable for the Villa to continue paying an estimated N47bn annual electricity bill.

Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, had also cited the White House’s use of solar energy as justification for the initiative.

Before the solar transition, the State House had accumulated electricity debts nearing N1bn.

In February 2024, AEDC listed the Presidential Villa among the top government debtors with an outstanding bill of N923.87m.

Following a reconciliation process, the figure was revised to N342.35m, which President Bola Tinubu ordered to be settled immediately.

Fashedemi told senators that the testing phase had exposed systemic overbilling by AEDC, with transformers charging for electricity not supplied.

He said, “What we have discovered in the course of all of this, especially during the testing phase, is that there’s been a lot of overbilling.

“When we’re testing it, a number of the transformers, we’re seeing that they were billing for electricity not supplied.

“So we are using that period now to point it out to them and hopefully do some reconciliation about this legacy liability.”

The Permanent Secretary expressed optimism that once the full cutover is completed, the Villa’s ageing generators, installed when the complex was originally built, would no longer be needed.

“We’ve been having a lot of pressure from the service providers that we need to replace them,” he said of the generators.

Fashedemi added, “But we are happy that with the performance we are seeing at the State House Medical Centre, when we do the cutover, we will not need to do that.

“Maybe we just have a couple for backup in case of any eventuality.

“But we believe that the solar infrastructure will suffice.”

Meanwhile, Senator Lawan criticised the N127m allocation for SUV vehicles in the State House budget, describing it as grossly inadequate.

“I will join my colleague Aminu in also rejecting N127m for SUV cars in the Villa. It cannot buy even a bulletproof tokunbo,” the committee chairman said.

He added, “We don’t want a situation where a visiting president will use a tokunbo (fairly used vehicle) at the airport. No, that is unacceptable.”

He directed the Budget Office of the Federation to review the allocation upward, adding, “They have to do justice to your request, not by reducing it to a paltry amount that would end up buying a tokunbo.”

The senator commended the State House for appearing before the committee on schedule, noting that it set a positive example for other ministries, departments, and agencies.

“If the State House would appear before this committee as you did, we see no reason why other MDAs will not come. You have led by example,” Lawan said.