Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much UK aid has been spent in support of privatising electricity in Nigeria since 2002; and through which funding streams that aid was provided.

The UK has spent £39 million since 2002 supporting the reform on Nigeria’s power system. Of this around £7 million has been spent directly on support to privatisation and around £14 million on market and regulatory reform.

Support has been provided through two phases of the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF) programme. The first phase ran from 2007 to the end of 2011 (and spent £15.5 million on the power sector, of which £4 million was on privatisation). The second phase started at the end of 2011 and runs to December 2016 (and has spent £23.5 million on the power sector to date, £3 million on privatisation). DFID support has helped more than double the power supply.