The Federal Government has launched a national investment framework, the Nigeria Power for Health Initiative (NPHI), designed to resolve chronic electricity shortages across the country’s health sector and guarantee uninterrupted power to at least 30 percent of healthcare facilities by 2027.

The plan was formally announced by the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, alongside the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, during the National Healthcare Electrification Investor Matchmaking Forum held in Lagos.

The initiative introduces a public-private partnership structure utilizing an Energy-as-a-Service model to transition public hospitals away from traditional, state-funded energy procurement that frequently suffers from poor maintenance.

Under the new arrangement, private Energy Service Providers will finance, install, and maintain power solutions—including solar mini-grids, embedded generation, and hybrid energy systems—while healthcare facilities pay solely for consumed energy. Implementation will initially focus on federal tertiary hospitals to secure reliable power for critical operations, including intensive care units, operating theaters, cold-chain vaccine storage, and diagnostic laboratories, before scaling up to secondary, primary, and private health centers nationwide.

“Energy poverty is holding back our reforms and slowing down our healthcare transformation agenda,” Dr. Salako stated during his keynote address, emphasizing that “electricity is not merely a utility in a healthcare facility. When electricity fails, healthcare delivery stagnates.”

To ensure long-term sustainability and oversight, the government has established an Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee co-chaired by both ministries, an Inter-Agency Technical Committee, and dedicated Facility Energy Management Teams within participating hospitals.

Supported by the UK Partnership for Accelerating Climate Transition (UK PACT) programme, the framework aims to attract private capital and development finance to lower the burden of high diesel costs and grid instability across Nigeria’s 35,000 healthcare facilities.