DisCos Collect N2.26Trillion Revenue in 15 Months

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Ayodeji Gbeleyi, the director general of the Bureau for Public Enterprises, BPE, said the electricity Distribution Companies, DisCos, collected N2.263 trillion in revenue from the first quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, a period of 15 months.

At the first quarter of 2024, when he assumed office as DG, the DisCos collected N291.52 billion. This went up to N431.16bn at the second quarter; N466.69bn in third quarter; and N509.84bn in last quarter of 2024. By the end of the first quarter in 2025 it notched up to N553.63bn, adding up to N2.263 trillion.

Gbeleyi, who spoke on Tuesday at a media briefing in Abuja, said due to continual reforms, seven out of the 11 DisCos have been restructured to make them more efficient, while the core investors of four remain intact and giving optimal performance. Ughelli, Gerengu, Egbin, and Kanji generating companies, GenCos have ramped up capacity, while Zungeru has added another 700MW. As of Q1 2025, the Average Electricity Generation, AEG, was 5366MW out of 13,500MW installed capacity. The challenge remains the capacity to evacuate the energy generated.

To date, 243 government companies have been privatised in the country. Gbeleyi said 79 of these were done before 1999 while 164 were privatised since the return of democracy from 1999 to 2023. Of the 164, a total of127 companies were privatized under the regime of Olusegun Obasanjo, 23 under Umar Yar’Adua-Goodluck Jonathan regime and 14 under Muhammadu Buhari.

Analysis of the sales strategy shows that core investor sales account for the highest slot of 24 percent. Public Offer accounts for 20 percent; Concession 20 percent; and Asset sale, 20 percent. Private placement accounts for six percent, while five percent were liquidated. A total of 91 government enterprises are still not privatised, some of them are being considered for privatisation by the Tinubu administration.

The BPE has been tasked by President Bola Tinubu to create the enabling environment to generate money to fund the budgets and create over 50 million jobs to achieve its target of raising Nigeria’s gross domestic product, GDP, to one trillion dollars and achieve seven percent average annual GDP growth rate.

To support the to government deliver the eight-points agenda, Gbeleyi says BPE will work hard to generate revenue, stabilise the economy, create jobs, and enhance the country’s infrastructure stock. They would drive revenue optimisation, boost agriculture and unlock energy and natural resources.

The DG said the agency is driving revenue generation by focusing on 15 strategic projects to generate N312.3 billion to fund the 2025 Appropriation Act under Assets Sale/Privatisation as follows.

To boost agriculture for food security, BPE says it will restructure and recapitalise the Bank of Agriculture (BOA); recapitalise and fully commercialise NAIC; Partial Commercialisation and PPP Initiatives on some of the farming and irrigation projects of the River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) and Sustainable Power and Irrigation Project in Nigeria (SPIN) .

To unlock energy and natural resources, BPE would improve energy supply by accelerating completion of some strategic transactions under the Distribution Sector Recovery Programme (DISREP) = Afam 3 Fast Power; development of the Makurdi Hydropower Plant and reform the Mining Sector.

Despite the positive outlook, Gbeleyi said challenges remain. These include: absence of clear and predictable legal and regulatory framework that govern the PPP space, for instance, conflicting roles of agencies; resistance to reforms in some cases by Ministries, Departments and Agencies;  inadequate funding to drive and finance  reforms and transactions; Long standing litigation from legacy transactions – ALSCON, Sapele and Ogorode Power Plants, Delta Steel Company (DSC), Lagos International Trade Fair Complex (LITFC), Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS); and absence of a robust pipeline of PPP projects.

The agency said they are engaging the stakeholders to clear the grey areas and get the companies working at optimum capacity.

On job creation, Gbeleyi said the expansion of the e-commerce market and the growth of POS systems, in part due to BPE’s activities, have led to the creation of over 1.2 million jobs, with an additional 500,000 direct jobs.

He explained that the federal government has put in place a regulatory framework to secure pension funds managed by pension fund administrators.

“Prior to the pension reform, which was also anchored by the Bureau in 2004, we had situations where men and women who had served our country meritoriously had to endure long queues to get their minimum pension payment. But come the Pension Reform Act in 2004, the establishment of a supervisory and regulatory framework and the licensing of operators came on stream. Presently, there are 23 pension fund administrators in Nigeria. Together, they have   registered over 10.79 million RSA accounts as at the end of June 2025.

On port reforms, the DG said 26 port terminals were leased or concessioned by the Nigerian Ports Authority across six Nigerian ports: Apapa, Tincan, Tincan Island, Calabar, Warri, and Port Harcourt. This has reduced turnaround time for ships and cargo.

Privatisation in the aviation sector is said to be equally a success story. Companies like NAHCO, the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company, and SAHOL were privatised by the BPE. Their total assets were N3.3bn back in December 2024. This has grown to N41.7 billion, while the market share has galloped from 21 percent to 40 percent.