Abuja raises ₦729 billion to chip at the power-sector debt

The Federal Government has raised ₦728.9 billion through the second issuance under its ₦4 trillion Power Sector Multi-Instrument Issuance Programme, bringing the total raised to more than ₦1.1 trillion, officials confirmed on Monday.

The money is meant to clear a snarl of legacy debts that have left generation companies unpaid, gas suppliers wary, and distribution companies arguing they cannot invest. Nigeria’s power crisis is not a mystery of engineering. It is a chain of unpaid invoices.

Bond buyers — pension funds, banks, a few offshore names who still hold naira duration — are being asked to trust that this round of paper is different from the last. The programme’s defenders say ring-fencing and a clearer waterfall of payments will help. Critics say you cannot issue your way out of a tariff that does not cover cost.

Households will judge it the only way they ever have: by whether the fan stays on through the night. Until then, ₦729 billion is a large number attached to a stubbornly dark problem.