Nigeria to Review Privatization of Power Assets

Nigeria will review the sale of power assets to private investors after they have been unable to improve power supply in Africa’s most populous country.

The buyers of the assets are making technical and commercial losses and only distribute a fraction of existing capacity to end-users, according to the country’s Power Minister, Sale Mamman.

While the country can only generate 13,000 megawatts, it is only able to transmit about 4,500 megawatts to the power grid with only 3,000 megawatts of that getting to consumers.

A proposal to review the privatization has been submitted to the cabinet for consideration and companies capable of running the distributors are invited to invest.

Nigeria, is still grappling with blackouts despite power privatization seven years ago that promised to fix its power shortages.

A $2.7 billion debt owed to power producers by the state-owned company that buys their output and resell to distributors, is threatening to undermine their viability and crumble the power market.