Oluwafunbi Adewoyin, a corporate finance expert and an associate chartered accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has highlighted that significant infrastructure development, particularly transport, energy & power infrastructure are major sectors Nigeria must focus on in its plans to grow the country into a $1 trillion economy by 2030
Speaking in an interview with BusinessDay, Adewoyin emphasised that “the backbone of any sustainable GDP growth is significant infrastructure development, particularly transport, energy & power infrastructure”.
As allocation to infrastructure financing grow, he noted that, private sector infrastructure developers and infrastructure companies must ensure that their projects’ bankability meets credit requirements from all investor groups if they must secure financing for their assets.
According to National Pension Commission (PenCom) 2025 and 2026 Monthly Reports, Nigeria has grown its pension funds allocation to infrastructure financing by 21 percent from N319.3 billion in December 2025 to N388.8 billion in June 2026.
This is a significant increase from N242.2 billion as of December 2024 , signalling that viable projects must be developed across key sectors to attract the available funding.
Adewoyin cited an example that when funding power plants or renewable energy projects, institutional investors require Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), between the power producer and offtakers for revenue assurance.
But generally, the developers must demonstrate sufficient technical experience (or through a third-party) in the operations and maintenance (O&M) of similar assets.
“This is to guarantee their ability to secure the required regulatory approvals, demonstrate the asset’s capacity to continue operation over the project life, thereby generate sufficient cash flows for debt servicing”, he said
He further explained that “beyond these, infrastructure developers must present the unit economics which decompose the pricing or tariff build-up that explains the cost components across the value chain”.
Investors reference this to determine the project’s route-to-market, understand pricing constraints and potential bottlenecks that can affect project viability.
Likewise, beyond building credible financial models for projects, investors want to know if the project cash flows can withstand stress-testing of multiple variables affecting the project.
Such variables include delays in construction period, changes in customer tariff, FX movement or volatility, equity contribution by project owners, cost of capital sensitivity amongst others.
He explained that this is necessary because lenders consider the project appraisal holistically together with important metrics such as Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR), payback period, Net present value and Project IRR.
“I must encourage project developers to prioritize project stress-testing/sensitivity analysis because it defines the extent of the project’s ability to repay debt obligations, determine if the project payback period is within the proposed loan tenor by the lender, and the probability of the project to deliver returns/positive cash flow under varying factors”, Adewoyin said.
Adewoyin also pointed out that the Africa Finance Corporation’s 2025 State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report consistently emphasised that projects and countries that will receive more attention from foreign investors must address high-impact needs.
“This is what infrastructure companies must focus on, to position Nigeria for improved funding for infrastructure development”, he said.
