The National Council on Privatisation, on Thursday, approved the request by the Bureau of Public Enterprise to proceed with the engagement with Transcorp Power Consortium.

This is with a view to securing the execution of the Performance Agreements on the sale of Afam Power Plc and Afam III Fast Power Ltd. The approval for the execution of the PAs on the sale of Afam Power Plc and Afam III Fast Power Ltd followed a memo presented to the NCP.

The target is to regularise outstanding conditions and operational targets for the post-acquisition plan and ensure the commercial viability of the plant. The memorandum was presented by the director-general of BPE, Ayodeji  Gbeleyi, at its third meeting held at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

Commenting on the development, Vice-President Kashim Shettima, who is the chairman of NCP, demanded a fundamental shift in Nigeria’s privatisation agenda. Mr Shettima restated the need for a move from simply selling state-owned enterprises to asset optimisation designed to power the nation’s trillion-dollar economy ambition.

He stated that the federal government had completed the sale process of the Afam Power plant, with an outstanding amount of N53.9 billion collected as privatisation proceeds.

Mr Shettima maintained that the NCP must serve as the economic compass guiding the nation’s investments and policy choices. The vice-president stressed that without urgent action, economic projections would remain theoretical.

“Our aspiration to build a trillion-dollar economy is a destination that demands discipline, vision, and absolute adherence to the compass produced by this council. Without such a compass, our economic projections would amount to nothing more than an exercise in theory formation,” Mr Shettima said.

He proposed a future where the NCP would focus on unlocking the value of Nigeria’s latent assets, which he described as an immense reservoir of national wealth.

“This includes underutilised land, dormant real estate, and untapped intellectual property. The necessity of this council has never been in doubt. We replace bureaucratic bottlenecks with commercial agility, relieve government of the costly burden of subsidising inefficient state-owned enterprises, and attract vital investment,” he said.

Mr Shettima directed the council to immediately explore modern models, such as long-term concessions, asset-backed securitisation, and core investor sales tied to strict performance benchmarks.

He also issued a stern warning on transaction integrity, demanding zero tolerance for ambiguities to avoid costly litigation and to send a “powerful signal of stability and seriousness to the international investment community”.

The director-general stated that while the asset has been fully handed over to the core investor, Transcorp Power Consortium, the government also restructured its transaction this year. He stated that after the sale of the Afam Power Plant to the Transcorp Consortium, which was finalised in November 2020, the federal government needed to execute the PAs.

He explained that PAs were a standard part of the post-acquisition process in Nigeria’s power sector privatisation, outlining the investor’s commitment to specific performance targets, such as increasing the plant’s operational capacity within a given timeframe.

Mr Gbeleyi stated that with the execution of the PAs to regularise the transactions, the BPE can now commence the mandatory post-privatization monitoring of the core investor’s performance obligations.

The director-general stated that the council also deliberated extensively on its own performance and that of the BPE in 2025, specifically regarding the accomplishments, including the unbundling of the Transmission Company of Nigeria.

(NAN)