Abstract
Over 60% of the Nigeria population still resides within the rural spaces. These rural spaces are zones of isolation with yet high electricity and energy demand for enhanced livelihood and settlement liveability. Despite the demand for electricity in these rural areas, it still remains under-serviced as far as accessibility to stable electricity supply is concerned; likewise connection history to conventional electricity grid is many rural areas remains a mirage. With rural energy resource potentials untapped, this study made use of both qualitative and qualitative data gathered across 472 rural households in 9 randomly selected rural local government areas (LGAs) to provide a narrative into the rural household energy experiences. The study brings to light the abundance of the unutilized renewable resources that can be utilized towards providing electricity for rural households. Limitation identified includes weak political will, limited profit orientation of electricity investors and limited energy choice information to households.Keywords: Electricity; Renewable energy; Rural householdsJEL Classifications: O18, Q42, Q43DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.7558
Highlights
The relevance of electricity to the development of settlements cannot be over-emphasized. Bhattacharyya (2006) reported a positive relationship between access to electricity, production and the development of small and medium scale enterprise
Notwithstanding the importance of electricity energy, over 50% of Nigerian communities can be classified to be in darkness owing to a lack of electricity, many of whom are within the rural areas (Aliyu et al, 2015; Bashir and Modu, 2018)
The guiding questions to this research are: What is the electricity or energy experience of rural dwellers in Oyo state: And are there hopes of making use of rural renewable energy resources towards improving rural electricity access? Like all rural spaces which are poorly serviced (Gbadamosi and Olorunfemi, 2016; Brinkerhoff et al, 2016), rural households in Nigeria still remain in darkness due to a lack or sporadic access to electricity when compared to urban area (Sunderland et al, 2016)
Summary
The relevance of electricity to the development of settlements cannot be over-emphasized. Bhattacharyya (2006) reported a positive relationship between access to electricity, production and the development of small and medium scale enterprise. Like all rural spaces which are poorly serviced (Gbadamosi and Olorunfemi, 2016; Brinkerhoff et al, 2016), rural households in Nigeria still remain in darkness due to a lack or sporadic access to electricity when compared to urban area (Sunderland et al, 2016). This limited rural access to electricity has been identified as one of the major limitations to the development of rural household capacity and the improved liveability of rural communities (Akuru et al, 2017). Using rural Oyo State as a case study, this study shall identify the various renewable energy resources that remain untapped and bring them to light for proposed utilization and optimization
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