The Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund says ₦671 billion in public capital has helped attract ₦1.6 trillion in private investment into Nigeria’s domestic gas infrastructure, as the government seeks to use public funding to unlock projects that have struggled to secure financing.
Oluwole Adama, Executive Director of the MDGIF, said the fund’s interventions now cover 31 projects and 205 infrastructure assets across the country.
Adama, who was represented by the fund’s Strategy Director, Elvis Duruji, made the disclosure at the Association of Energy Correspondents conference in Abuja on Thursday, September 24, 2026.
Based on the fund’s figures, every ₦1 of public money has attracted about ₦2.40 in private capital, according to calculations by Business Times.
The fund’s flagship example is a five-million-standard-cubic-feet-per-day mini-LNG plant being developed by Topline Limited in Delta State.
Adama said the project spent three years seeking financing before MDGIF’s equity participation helped unlock an InfraCredit guarantee, allowing the project to move towards completion.
He said the plant was expected to be commissioned within two to three months.
If that timeline holds, the facility could begin operations by December 2026.
The commissioning timeline would mark a further delay from an earlier projection. Nairametrics reported in August 2025 that the project was expected to be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 2025.
MDGIF said it has also partnered 30 unincorporated joint ventures and one equipment-leasing company as part of its efforts to expand gas infrastructure.
The portfolio includes 20 compressed natural gas mother stations, more than 80 daughter stations and another 75 daughter stations under the equipment-leasing arrangement.
Duruji said 127 projects had commenced, while 10 had been commissioned.
The figures, however, appear to measure different aspects of the fund’s portfolio, with MDGIF separately putting the number of projects covered by its headline investment figure at 31.
The fund’s interventions have already featured in government-backed CNG infrastructure expansion. President Bola Tinubu commissioned four MDGIF-supported CNG projects in Lagos, Abuja and Owerri in May 2026.
MDGIF said the projects in its portfolio could add about 475 million standard cubic feet of gas per day to domestic supply when operational.
That would represent roughly a quarter of Nigeria’s current gas output of about 1.9 billion standard cubic feet per day.
The fund is also working with four flare-out awardees on projects designed to commercialise about 444 million standard cubic feet of gas per day that would otherwise be flared.
The MDGIF intervention reflects the government’s attempt to use public capital to reduce financing risks and make gas infrastructure more attractive to private investors.
However, the ₦1.6 trillion figure represents private investment attracted by the fund rather than money already deployed across completed projects.
The performance of the programme will therefore depend not only on the amount of private capital mobilised but also on how quickly the projects reach completion and begin delivering additional gas to the domestic market.
