Vice-President Kashim Shettima has said Nigeria will require about $410 billion in additional investment by 2060 to achieve its net-zero pathway.
Gatekeepers News reports that Shettima made the disclosure on Tuesday at the second edition of the Decarbonising Infrastructure in Nigeria (DIN) Summit in Abuja.
The summit, held at the United Nations House, was organised by the Office of the Vice-President in collaboration with the National Council on Climate Change and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).
It was themed, “De-risking Green Infrastructure Investment in Nigeria: Enabling Policy, Project Readiness and Risk-Sharing Solutions.”
Represented by Ibrahim Hadejia, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Shettima said the scale of funding required for Nigeria’s energy transition represented not only a challenge but also a major opportunity for investors.
“Our energy transition plan estimates that Nigeria will require about $410 billion in additional investment above business-as-usual through 2060 to achieve our net-zero pathway,” he said.
“That is a significant financing requirement. But it also tells us something else: there is a very large investment opportunity ahead of us.”
The vice-president said government alone could not provide the capital needed to finance the country’s long-term energy and infrastructure requirements.
He therefore called for stronger collaboration with the private sector, development finance institutions, domestic financial institutions and institutional investors, alongside mechanisms for sharing investment risks.
“We need the private sector. We need development finance institutions. We need domestic financial institutions and institutional investors. And, perhaps most importantly, we need projects that are properly prepared and capable of attracting that capital,” Shettima said.
According to him, the challenge confronting Nigeria is no longer the absence of climate policies or ambitions, but the ability to translate those policies into bankable projects that investors can evaluate, finance and implement.
He said investors required policy certainty, credible revenue models, adequate technical preparation and clearly defined risk allocation before committing funds.
“These are practical questions. And I believe that is where DIN Summit 2.0 can make a useful contribution,” he said.
Shettima added that Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 recognised the need to build a stronger pipeline of projects with viable financing structures, expand private-sector participation and improve access to climate finance.
Nigeria’s $27.2bn annual financing gap
Philbert Johnson, UNIDO Sub-Regional Representative in Nigeria and ECOWAS, said Nigeria’s physical infrastructure investment requirements were estimated at about $3 trillion by 2050.
He said tracked climate finance flows into the country averaged only $2.5 billion annually in 2021 and 2022, against an estimated annual requirement of $29.7 billion.
The figures, he said, translated into an annual financing gap of about $27.2 billion.
Johnson identified policy and regulatory uncertainty, fragmented approval processes, unclear institutional mandates and undefined revenue or offtake arrangements as some of the factors limiting projects’ ability to attract financing.
“These projects sit at very different stages of maturity, from concepts which require feasibility work to projects ready to seek finance,” he said.
He called for the operationalisation of the Climate Change Act and greater certainty around power purchase agreements to unlock carbon finance in Nigeria and across Africa.
Johnson said UNIDO would support project development through its Computer Model for Feasibility Analysis and Reporting (COMFAR) software and Digital Investment Promotion platform.
According to him, the tools are already being used by more than 11,000 practitioners across 160 countries.
From ideas to investment
Musaddiq Adamu, Personal Assistant to the President on Subnational Infrastructure, said the DIN Summit was established to address a practical question: how to move green infrastructure projects from ideas to actual investment.
He said pre-summit workshops had been held across the energy, transport, urban development and agriculture sectors.
Adamu recalled that the inaugural summit attracted more than 400 stakeholders and produced a green infrastructure investment pipeline and policy communiqué.
He cited the electrification of port operations as one of the outcomes of the initiative, saying engagements following a presentation by APM Terminals at the 2025 summit contributed to a $60 million agreement with the Nigerian Ports Authority.
He said Onne Port was being positioned as Nigeria’s first green port.
“For me, that is an important lesson. The objective is not simply to have a good conversation. The goal is to create real investment opportunity,” Adamu said.
Tenioye Majekodunmi, Director-General of the National Council on Climate Change, said green infrastructure had the potential to create more than 300,000 jobs.
