Nigeria is stepping up its pitch to international oil and gas investors, betting that two years of politically costly economic reforms and a fast-growing project pipeline can finally translate the country’s vast energy endowment into sustained capital inflows.
The push was on display in Nigeria’s commercial capital, where government officials, diplomats and energy executives gathered at the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce’s annual Energy Day to make the case that Africa’s largest crude producer has moved from promise to delivery.
The optimism is underpinned by the rollout of the Petroleum Industry Act, a long-delayed overhaul of the legal and fiscal framework governing the oil and gas industry, alongside a broader push to deepen domestic refining and revive investor confidence in gas and power projects.
Olu Verheijen, special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on energy, told the gathering that Nigeria’s challenge has never been a shortage of resources but a failure to convert them into output.
The country has oil, gas, sunlight, water, arable land and a skilled workforce, she said, but has historically struggled to turn reserves into production, production into revenue, and gas into reliable power that can drive industrial growth.
“Nigeria has never lacked potential. We have oil, gas, sunlight, water, land, talent and skill. What we have lacked is conversion — turning resources into results, reserves into production, production into revenue, gas into power and power into productivity,” she said.
Verheijen pointed to a string of fiscal reforms, most notably the removal of long-standing fuel subsidies and the unification of Nigeria’s multiple exchange rates, as having repaired government balance sheets and made the country a more credible destination for capital.
Federation revenue climbed to roughly N21 trillion in 2024 from about N12 trillion a year earlier, she said, a jump she attributed partly to the fiscal savings unlocked by subsidy removal.
“For the first time in a generation, the majority of petrol consumed in Nigeria is refined locally,” she said.
Verheijen said local petrol output rose from almost nothing in 2023 to roughly 48 million litres a day, allowing the country to meet most of its own fuel needs for the first time in a generation.
That shift, she added, is curbing demand for the foreign exchange previously needed to import refined products, easing pressure on the naira.
The government is also moving to unclog the power sector, long a drag on industrial competitiveness despite the country’s gas reserves. Verheijen said Abuja has approved a debt-clearance program of up to N4 trillion to settle verified arrears owed to power generation companies and gas suppliers, a step intended to restore liquidity and rebuild trust across a value chain that has been starved of cash for years.
Taken together, she argued, the changes mean Nigeria can now offer investors more than raw potential, pointing instead to a credible reform path, an expanding pipeline of bankable projects and evidence that policy commitments are being followed through on the ground.
British officials used the forum to signal continued interest in the market.
Grace Bell, first secretary for economic partnerships at the British Deputy High Commission in Lagos, speaking on behalf of Deputy High Commissioner Jonny Baxter, said the UK sees openings across project development, engineering, financing, grid management and renewable energy integration, and that the relationship works best when commercial deals are backed by a stable policy environment.
“The UK-Nigeria relationship is strongest when built on practical collaboration between businesses and supported by the right policy environment,” Bell said.
Abimbola Olashore, president of the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce, described Nigeria as one of Africa’s most attractive energy markets and said gas infrastructure, financing and the broader energy transition remain central pillars of UK-Nigeria economic ties.
He said the chamber would keep working to connect investors with opportunities across the oil, gas and renewables value chains.
Executives from the domestic private sector struck a similar note, while flagging persistent operational hurdles. Adegbite Falade, managing director of Aradel Holdings, said Nigerian energy companies are positioned to lead the next phase of growth but urged the industry to move faster on execution, expand investment across the value chain and prioritise gas development as a feedstock for industrial expansion. Reliable power, he said, remains a prerequisite for lifting productivity and supporting business growth more broadly.
Taaj Shobayo, who chairs the chamber’s energy group, said Nigeria’s ultimate test will be whether it can convert its resource base into a dependable energy supply and higher living standards, calling for deeper public-private collaboration to push projects across the line.
Despite the upbeat tone, participants acknowledged that the country’s energy ambitions remain a work in progress. Sustained investment, they said, will hinge on whether Nigeria can maintain policy consistency, build out infrastructure and keep executing on the reform agenda rather than treating recent gains as a finished product.
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