FG Targets State Asset Sales to Private Investors to Boost Revenue

• Edun wants emerging markets to depend less on external funding

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Nigeria plans to start selling state-owned assets to private investors this year, as the authorities seek to leverage economic reforms aimed at drawing capital to the West African nation, a Bloomberg report said yesterday.

The government is identifying which assets it will sell, along with the timeline of when they will be offered, Finance Minister, Wale Edun, said in an interview on the sidelines of the AlUla Conference for Emerging Market Economies in Saudi Arabia. “The plan is to offer some assets in 2026,” he said.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu embarked on a series of reforms after coming to power in May 2023, including eliminating costly petrol subsidies, allowing the currency to trade more freely against the dollar and overhauling its tax laws. The measures helped rein in consumer inflation, stabilise the naira and boost government revenue.

“What we have put in place has made Nigeria very competitive in terms of the economic conditions” and “very attractive in terms of the incentives for investors” Edun said. “I think investors are now more comfortable to invest in Nigeria,” he added.

The West Africa nation, which is Africa’s largest crude producer, announced last week that it’s in talks with a Chinese firm and other investors to operate some of its refineries. The talks include an option for the investors to buy equity in the plants, which haven’t worked for decades, despite billions of dollars being spent trying to revamp them.

After almost three years of reforms, the government now intends to “drive private investment” to boost economic growth. The economy is expected to grow 4.4 per cent this year, compared with an estimated 4.2 per cent in 2025, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates.

“We are interested in private public partnerships, optimisation of our assets by having others come in and invest,” Edun said.

Nigeria previously privatised assets including power-generation and distribution assets in 2013, and state telecom operator Nitel in 2015.

Also, Edun has said that developing economies must rely less on external financing as high global interest rates and geopolitical tensions continue to strain public finances.

Asked how Nigeria is responding to rising global interest rates and conflicts between major powers such as the US and China, the Nigerian finance minister told Al-Eqtisadiah, a Saudi daily business newspaper at the same event,  that current conditions require developing countries to rethink traditional financing models.

“I think what it means for countries like Nigeria, other African countries, and even other developing countries is that we have to rely less on others and more on our own resources, on our own devices,” he said on the sidelines of the Conference for Emerging Market Economies.

He added: “We have to trade more with each other, we have to cooperate and invest in each other.”

Edun emphasised the importance of mobilising domestic resources, particularly savings, to support investment and long-term economic development.

According to him, rising debt servicing costs are placing an increasing burden on developing economies, limiting their ability to fund growth and social programmes.

“In an environment where developing countries as a whole — what we are paying in debt service, what we are paying in terms of interest costs and repayments of our debt — is more than we are receiving in what we call overseas development assistance, and it is more than even investments by wealthy countries in our economies,” he said.

Edun added that countries in the Global South are increasingly recognising the need for deeper regional integration.

His comments reflect growing concern among developing nations that elevated borrowing costs and global instability are reshaping development finance, accelerating a shift toward domestic resource mobilization and stronger economic ties among emerging markets.