Abba Abubakar Aliyu came to one of Nigeria's most pressured energy seats without the usual résumé of a career bureaucrat.
As CEO of the Rural Electrification Agency, he is now leading the push to bring electricity to 15,000 underserved communities across Nigeria, with solar power at the center of that effort.
The scale of the work is hard to overstate. Millions of Nigerians in rural and peri-urban areas remain cut off from the grid, and the REA's solar-focused strategy is positioned as the most practical path to closing that gap quickly and affordably.
Aliyu's background sets him apart from the officials who typically occupy this kind of role, and that difference appears to be shaping how he approaches the job. The details of that approach, and how far it has come, are what make his story worth following.
Originally published by BusinessDay.