Risk Allocation and Mitigation in Nigeria’s Privatisation Programme—A Case Study of Electric Power Sector Privatisation

Under the Nigerian privatisation programme, the issues of risk allocation and mitigation were never always properly handled. Historically, there had always been a tendency to dump all the project risks on the private sector partner without properly evaluating whether it was capable of managing them. Extant literature has shown that where the comparative advantages of parties to handle risks are not properly taken into consideration, the allocation of risk is unbalanced and the tendency for the project to run into difficulties and/or fail increases. This paper looks at the electric power sector privatisation, distilling how key project risks were handled under the exercise. This should be a good pointer as to whether the privatisation exercise would be a success in the long run.