Nigeria is considering offers of more than $20 billion for the assets of its national electricity transmission company as it struggles to provide adequate power to Africa’s largest economy, Power Minister Chinedu Nebo said.
The sale of state-owned Transmission Co. of Nigeria may start “in a few years,” Nebo said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Africa in Abuja. The government will also focus on developing renewable energy projects to diversify its supply of electricity, he said.
“The interest now for transmission is over $20 billion,” he said. “People are coming from everywhere.”
Transmission is the only segment of the power industry that the government still controls as it seeks to curb regular blackouts in Africa’s largest oil producer. The country generates about a 10th of the power that South Africa does even though its population of about 170 million is more than three times larger.
The government of President Goodluck Jonathan is spending $3.5 billion to boost transmission capacity by 50 percent. Nigeria sold 15 state-owned generation and distribution companies to raise funds.
The current transmission capacity of Abuja-based TCN is 5,500 megawatts compared with an installed generation capacity of 8,000 megawatts, Nebo said. This means that if generation companies were operating at full capacity, the grid would be unable to transmit all of the power to homes. The government wants transmission capacity to exceed 6,000 megawatts by 2016, Nebo said.
