Geregu Power and Bandit Capitalism? By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In 2005, Nigeria enacted the Electric Power Sector Reform Act to “establish the legal framework for the formation of initial and successor companies, transfers assets and liabilities from the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to new entities, and creates a competitive electricity market.” The previous year, Abdulaziz Yari had graduated with a diploma in secretarial studies from the Sokoto State Polytechnic. He was the state Chairman of the All-Nigeria Peoples’ Party (ANPP) in Zamfara State in north-west Nigeria. 

Over the 21 years since then, the paths of power sector reform in Nigeria and Abdulaziz Yari’s career in power have negotiated different trajectories to a place of unadulterated intercourse.

Power sector reform in Nigeria involved more than the un-bundling of NEPA or what became known as Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). It also entailed ensuring the existence of a system to regulate both investment in the new entities and competition between them.

One year into the reform process, Geregu Power PLC was created in November 2006 as a publicly traded company with interests in the newly un-bundled power sector. It began operations in 2007. That was the same year that Abdulaziz Yari was first elected to the House of Representatives to represent the good people of Anka/Talata Mafara Federal Constituency of Zamfara State.

In that same election, Mahmud Aliyu Shinkafi who had served for two terms as the deputy governor was elected as the Governor of Zamfara State. He was also father-in-law to Abdulaziz Yari. 

Two years later, in 2009, Governor Shinkafi defected from the ANPP to the then ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) taking with him most of the party’s leadership in the state. In response, the national leadership of the ANPP deputed Yari at the head of a caretaker leadership of the party in Zamfara. 

In 2011, Abdulaziz Yari ran against his father-in-law for the position of governor of the state and won handily. On 29 May 2011, he was sworn in as Zamfara State’s elected governor. His route to the position had been nothing short of meteoric. 

One feature of the investments that went into the power sector was cross-investments. In 2013, Amperion Power Distribution Company Limited acquired controlling interests in Geregu Power. Amperion was “a subsidiary of Forte Oil Plc.” Forte Oil was a successor of the company originally known in Nigeria as British Petroleum. On 30 July 1979, the military regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo made it one of the casualties of Nigeria’s frontline role in the liberation of South Africa.

But  let’s not digress. 

By 2019, Abdulaziz Yari was term-limited as governor and ran to be elected to the Senate. By this time, he had also defected to the All-Progressives Congress (APC). Yari won commandingly to go to the Senate in 2019, but the Supreme Court denied him his victory because of a messy intra-party fight which cost the APC all of its victories across all offices in Zamfara State.

Over the next few years, Yari appeared to make more than enthusiastic acquaintance with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC). 

In May 2022, for instance, it was reported that the Commission had arrested him in connection with “investigations into the N84bn fraud involving the suspended Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris.” 

Three months earlier, the Federal High Court had ordered forfeiture of 10 different properties linked to Abdulaziz Yari and “situated in choice areas of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja; Kaduna and Zamfara states and Maryland in the United States of America.”

None of these prevented him from being elected in 2023 as the Senator representing Zamfara West. On his first tour of duty, Yari ran to become the president of the Senate. The contest was so intense that the governors of some of the richest states in Nigeria practically had to relocate their state treasuries to the floor of the Senate, turning the election of the presiding officer into a money Olympiad. It was a close-run thing. In the end, Yari secured 46 votes, losing out to Godswill Akpabio, the choice of the president, who got 63. It was a big statement of intent, nevertheless. 

But he was only warming up. On 29 December 2025, Ma’am Energy Limited, a company controlled by Abdulaziz Yari’s family paid $750 million or N1.09 trillion Naira to acquire a 95% stake in Amperion Power. In strict Naira terms, this is about 14% above the cumulative total of N885.81 budgeted by Zamfara State over the eight years during which Yari governed it from 2011 to 2019.

This transaction put Ma’am Energy in beneficial control of 77% of the shares in Geregu power. Amperion was until then the controlling shareholder in Geregu power. Following the transaction, Senator Yari was installed as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of Geregu Power, which also got a new management. This was the most expensive single transaction of such nature involving exclusively Nigerian interests. 

There were enough red flags here to set off all regulatory alarm bells south of the Sahara and north of the Zambezi. But neither the provenance of the capital nor the biography of the beneficial actors appeared sufficient to have aroused the attentions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, (SEC). 

As a publicly quote company, trading in Geregu Power stocks is regulated by the SEC. The exchange of shares did not occur on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Rather it occurred through the execution of a complex restructuring of the holding company and involved a change in ownership of the majority interest in company. 

In June 2026, Senator Yari threatened publicly to sue un-named persons attempting to link him to an extraordinary haul of gold bullion reportedly confiscated by the EFCC at the Aminu Kano International Airport in Kano. 

For context, artisanal mining is said to be “one of the largest informal economic activities in the country.” It’s lucrative. The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) estimates the annual value of illegal mining and gold smuggling in the country at over nine billion US dollars. Zamfara, the state until recently governed by Abdulaziz Yari, is fertile home to “more than 21 artisanal gold mines…. cutting across six (of its 14) Local Government Areas.”

Anyway, shortly after the ownership change, Geregu Power defaulted on repayment obligations on a bond issued in 2022, long before the transaction that installed Abdulaziz Yari in effective control of the company. On 21 August, Chairman Yari issued a statement disclosing that he had  chosen in his “capacity as Chairman, to personally step in and provide the funds required to address the immediate outstanding bond obligation.”

There are at least four concerns here.

First, there is a transparency imperative. If the original acquisition triggered a smell test, this latest development clearly raises legal red flags. The full details of the transaction leading to the amortization of this debt have yet to be disclosed beyond the troubling personal statement by Senator Yari. None of the regulators has said a word. That silence on its own is dreadfully eloquent.

Second, this raises fears about market integrity. Senator Yari may own a generous piggy bank and enjoy controlling interests in Geregu Power, but he is a separate entity from the company. The regulators exist not merely to advance his deep pockets of unknown provenance but to guarantee the integrity of the market and of investors. That is not served by appearing to conflate the funds of Chairman with those of a publicly traded company.

Third, the suggestion of regulatory abdication is real. The fact that a publicly-traded company can run into such a high-profile default less than mere six months after an expensive change of ownership suggests a failure of regulatory due diligence. The alternative does not even bear thinking about.

Fourth, there are issues of fiscal governance. So, a Senator and recent Governor is paying off a reported six billion Naira in debt to a company in which he is invested. How will that be taxed – as philanthropy, investment, or a write-off? In the case of Abdulaziz Yari, all this qualifies him to lead the campaign to re-elect the president. Fundraising for this will be headed by the man who heads Nigeria’s revenue service. Now, that is truly bandit capitalism.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu