*3.1. Sample Description and Household Fuel Sources*

The breakdown of the sample in terms of age group, gender of respondent, number of permanent household members and education of respondent is shown as Table 2. Most of the sample respondents were between 18 and 45 years of age, and most were male (especially in FCT). As mentioned earlier, most household heads in Nigeria tend to be male and they make many of the key decisions for the household, so the preponderance of males in the sample is not surprising. However, there were two female household heads in the sample, and both were in the Lagos State communities. Household sizes tended to be in the 1 to 7 range for Lagos State communities (82% of households were in this category) but the figure was higher for the FCT communities with over a third of the households having 14 or more members. This was reflected in the number of rooms across both locations, with the majority of

Lagos State households having 1–4 rooms (84% of the households) while the households in the FCT communities had a higher number of rooms on average, with 65% having greater than 4 rooms per households. Most of the respondents in both areas were educated to at least secondary level.


**Table 2.** Sample description in terms of age, gender, number of rooms in the house, size of household and education.

Table 3a shows the households used a variety of energy sources as their main non-cooking fuel. The patterns of use were observed to vary across both locations. The majority (86%) of households surveyed in Lagos State used a solar home system (SHS) as their main energy source for providing lighting, followed by grid electricity, and then petrol (for powering a generator). Solar home systems also provided the main source of home lighting in FCT communities surveyed; however, the percentage of users was lower, at 66%, compared to the Lagos State households. The next largest lighting energy source in the surveyed FCT households were dry cell batteries at 30%, with kerosene at 4% completing the list.


**Table 3.** Main energy source for non-cooking (mostly lighting) purposes and satisfaction with the capacity of the main household non-cooking energy source.

Table 3b is a frequency table showing the satisfaction of the surveyed households with the energy capacity of their main non-cooking household energy sources. Across both locations, most respondents (90% in Lagos State and 79% in FCT) indicated not being satisfied with the capacity of their main non-cooking energy source. In the FCT, the only energy source mentioned by households as satisfactory, capacity wise, were dry cell batteries. In Lagos State, 2% of households were satisfied with the energy capacity of their petrol-powered generators, while 8% were satisfied with the capacity provided by the grid. None of the households across both locations indicated being satisfied with the energy capacity of their SHS.

Table 4 is a frequency table showing the spending on non-cooking energy sources by the households across both Lagos State and FCT. These data show that the surveyed Lagos State households spend more money on non-cooking energy than the surveyed FCT households; 52% of Lagos State households mentioned spending at least \$20 per month, while the figure for FCT households was 7%. The median spending of both locations was calculated using SPSS, and the values were rounded to \$20 for the Lagos State households and \$6 for the FCT households. The monthly spend on non-cooking energy variable is used as a proxy for household wealth in the sections covering the inferential statistical analyses, and the calculated median spending for both locations are used as thresholds to indicate the wealthier and less wealthy households.

**Table 4.** Household monthly spend on non-cooking energy across both locations.


The following sections will present the associations between the outcome variables and the monthly spend on non-cooking energy across both locations.
