Tunde Bakare
The national council on privatisation (NCP) has given its approval to Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) to monitor Transcorp Power Consortium’s compliance with the execution of the performance agreements (PAs) of the sale of Afam Power Plc and Afam Three Fast Power Limited.
The PAs often outline the expectations of both parties in a work relationship.
The decision to oversee Transcorp’s compliance comes exactly five years after the company acquired the plants in 2020.
According to a statement on Thursday by Stanley Nkwocha, senior special assistant to the president on media, the approval aims to regularise outstanding conditions and operational targets for the post-acquisition plan, ensuring the plant’s sustained commercial viability.
He said the move followed a memo presented to the NCP by Ayodeji Gbeleyi, director-general of BPE, at its third meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
In March 2019, Tony Elumelu, chairman of Transcorp Nigeria Plc, pledged to invest as much as $2.5 billion in power projects across the country.
In November 2020, the Transcorp Power Consortium announced that it had finalised acquisition of the 966 megawatts (MW) capacity Afam Electricity Generation Company (GenCo) at N105 billion — following a competitive process involving 12 bidding firms.
Afam Power Plc and Afam Three Fast Power Limited are both part of the Afam electricity GenCo power plant complex.
Speaking on the acquisition in the statement, Gbeleyi said the federal government had completed the sale process of the power plant, with an outstanding N53.9 billion collected as privatisation proceeds.
The BPE DG said the asset had been fully handed to Transcorp Power Consortium, the core investor, with the government restructuring the transaction this year.
Gbeleyi said with the execution of the PAs to regularise the transactions, the BPE can now begin “the mandatory post-privatisation monitoring of the core investor’s performance obligations”.
The director-general disclosed that the council also held extensive deliberations on its performance and that of the BPE in 2025, reviewing key achievements, including the unbundling of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
“As you heard at the meeting, the unbundling of the Transmission Company of Nigeria into two entities, Nigerian Independent System Operator, as well as the Transmission Service Provider, was achieved in the course of this year,” Gbeleyi was quoted as saying.
“Before the approval, Chairman of the NCP, Vice President Shettima, who demanded a fundamental shift in Nigeria’s privatisation agenda, said there is a need to shift from simply selling state-owned enterprises to asset optimisation designed to power the nation’s trillion-dollar economy ambition.”
On his part, Shettima said the new approach is essential, urging discipline and vision to help the country overcome long-standing inefficiencies.
He maintained that the NCP must function as the economic compass guiding Nigeria’s investments and policy decisions, warning that without decisive action, the nation’s economic projections would remain purely theoretical