Nigeria’s power sector needs US$15-20 billion investment in next three years

25 May 2012 – Thisdaylive reports her as saying this amount of capital would help to acquire and rehabilitate six generation and 11 distribution successor companies from the to be privatised Power Holding Company of Nigeria, acquire 10 national independent power producer (IPP) generation plants (4,770 MW of new capacity), procure related national independent transmission and gas distribution network assets, as well as related expanded distribution assets being built at a cost of US$8 billion by the three tiers of government from oil revenues.
 
Onagoruwa says lack of power or inefficient power supply cost Nigeria 3% GDP growth a year, and stresses that the country could not allow power outages to stifle economic growth. She says that developing countries including Nigeria cannot continue to depend on global multi-national and bilateral institutions to finance their power infrastructure, stating that replacement generation capacity would need to be financed by both domestic and international financial markets.

Commenting on the core investor sale method adopted for the privatisation of the distribution companies, she says the bidding parameters would be based primarily on the use of quality of service/efficiency parameters considered against investment proposals made by bidders aimed at reducing aggregate technical, commercial and collection (ATC&C) losses over an agreed timeframe.

Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan laid out plans in 2010 to break up the Power Holding Company of Nigeria and sell off its generation and distribution units. The country’s Ministry of Power says it is confident that the privatisation process will be complete by October this year and that the current power output of under 4,000 MW can be boosted to 6,000 MW by the end of the year and 10,000 MW by the end of 2013.