FG announced it paid ₦3.3tn power debt in April, GenCos say no money has arrived till now

• The government had announced in April that payments had begun as part of a plan to clear electricity sector debts accumulated over a decade.

• GenCos claim the debt burden has continued to grow and now exceeds ₦7 trillion.

Two months after the Federal Government announced it had begun settling Nigeria's power sector debt, the companies owed the money say nothing has arrived.

The Association of Power Generation Companies made the position clear during a webinar on Monday, with its chief executive Joy Ogaji stating flatly that despite official announcements of a payment plan, not a single naira had reached most generation companies under the arrangement.

"From that N3.3 trillion or N2.8 trillion, to date, we have not received a dime. Nothing has been received by the GenCos," she said.

In April, presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga announced that President Tinubu had approved a plan to settle legacy debts accumulated in the electricity sector between 2015 and 2025. The verified sum of N3.3 trillion was agreed upon as a full and final settlement, with 15 power plants signing agreements worth N2.3 trillion and N223 billion already disbursed.

The announcement was framed as the beginning of a new chapter for Nigeria's power sector, a structured resolution to a decade of underpayment that had left generation companies unable to maintain or expand their operations.

What Ogaji described on Monday was something very different. She said the N501 billion bond the government raised to fund the initial payments had not even been fully disbursed yet, and suggested the timeline for distribution was being stretched toward the election cycle. "I believe that they are planning the disbursement until the end of the election," she said.

The April announcement was itself not the first time the government committed to clearing the debt.

Tinubu had made a similar promise in July 2025 to clear what was then a N4 trillion debt, a commitment the GenCos took seriously at the time but which was never fulfilled. By February 2026, Ogaji had publicly noted the debt had ballooned further, saying it had climbed to N6.6 trillion by that point due to continued underpayment.

The N3.3 trillion figure agreed in April represented a significant reduction from what the generation companies say they are owed, and one the industry has not accepted. Ogaji said the GenCos never agreed to the lower figure because it does not account for what they in turn owe gas suppliers.

"When we reconciled our debt to the gas suppliers, we owed them over N4 trillion," she said, adding that gas companies had made clear they were not prepared to accept any reduction in what they were owed.

Only five generation companies, including Geregu, Ibom Power, FIPL, NDPHC and Mabon Energy, agreed to the government's bond terms and are currently receiving payments. Every other generation company in the country is waiting.

"Nothing has been done about the N3.3 trillion or the N6.8 trillion, which has now ballooned to over N7 trillion, and still growing," Ogaji said.

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