A multi-national company, Nigeria Backbone Infrastructure Limited, (NBIL), has announced its intention to invest $172billion to develop various infrastructure sectors in the country.
This investment, utilising alternative financing options, will be allocated to mineral resources, energy, agriculture, housing, and transportation sectors for the next 22 years, a statement by the company said yesterday.
The administration of President Bola Tinubu has openly reaffirmed its commitment to enhancing foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into the country, while also promoting alternative financing for the construction of essential infrastructure projects.
Recall that last year, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Doris Aniete, said the Government has secured $30billion in commitments from foreign investors. Despite this amount, Nigeria still requires investments to reduce its infrastructural gap which requires $3 trillion over a period of 30 years according to the implementation of the National Integrated Master Plan.
The Group Chief Executive Officer, Henry Owonka, said the company with foreign partners is seeking approval for a joint venture model to facilitate its planned investment in the country.
Owonka emphasised that the company intends to align with the current administration’s infrastructure plan, highlighting that a consistent influx of investment, as proposed by the company, is preferable to isolated investments by other investors especially in the mining sector.
The CEO stating plans for the mining sector noted that the company is ready to invest $4bn, “to explore mineral resources but we need data and that is also one of the offers we proposed so that we can bring in our expertise and help the government obtain accurate data and then we can explore those minerals. This partnership will help the government plan to reduce dependence on crude oil. We also doing this across all the ministries because it’s a $172bn investment drive”.
In a presentation at the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, the Chief Operations Officer, Clement Kwegyir-Afful, explained that the investment drive is to reduce the huge infrastructural gap in the country.
“The current administration is looking for several investments to come in through the private sector to reduce the infrastructure gap. The NBIL have come together as a team to support the Government achieve this mandate without any sovereign guarantee.
“We want to help address the energy gap through the use of renewables, so one of our subsidiaries focuses on renewable and how we can address that. We are going to bring in innovative ways of funding through financial engineering to raise funds that would address the infrastructure gap”.
