The World Bank, in a latest report, has put the number of people without access to electricity in Nigeria at a whopping 86.8 million, the highest world-wide.
The World Bank 2025 report, released on Wednesday, covers 2023, and is titled: “Tracking Sustainable Development Goal, SDG7: The energy progress report 2025”.
The report, which puts Nigeria in the lowest position globally, is the third year in a row the country is so positioned, and showed that out of the top 20 countries with weakest access 18 were from sub-Saharan Africa.
The World Bank report further noted that 61% of the Nigerian population had access to electricity and 26% had access to clean cooking energy in 2023. It said: “In 2023, the 20 countries with the largest electricity access deficits accounted for 76% of the global total, up from 75% in 2022. Once again, 18 of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
“For the third consecutive edition of this report, Nigeria (86.8 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (79.6 million), and Ethiopia (56.4 million) topped the list, together accounting for roughly a third of the entire global access deficit.
“The lowest national access rates were observed in South Sudan (5%) followed by Chad and Burundi (12%), all three of which have shown low annualized increases in access since 2010”.
