Nigerian government requires $10bn annually to revive power sector – Minister

The Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu, says the Federal Government requires 10 billion dollars in annual investment to revive the power sector for the next 10 years.

Adelabu said this in Abuja on Monday, at a one-day investigative hearing on halting the electricity tariff increase by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, organised by the Senate Committee on Power.

“For this sector to be revived, government needs to spend nothing less than 10 billion dollars annually in the next 10 years.

“This is because of the infrastructure requirement for the stability of the sector, but government can not afford that. And so we must make this sector attractive to investors and to lenders.

“So for us to attract investors and investment, we must make the sector attractive, and the only way it can be made attractive is that there must be commercial pricing,” he said.

Adelabu added: “If the value is still at N66 and government is not paying subsidy, the investors will not come.

“But now that we have increased the tariff for a band, there is interest being shown by investors.”

The minister said the major challenge in the sector was the absence of liquidity, saying that the sector had been operating on a subsidised tariff regime, given the absence of a cost-reflective tariff.

He said that the subsidy had not been funded over the years as huge liabilities were being owed to the generating companies and the gas companies.