One of the cover stories of This Day Newspaper of last week Tuesday, August 11th, was “Geregu Defaults on N40 Billion Bond Payment 8 Months After Otedola’s Exit.”
According to it, “Geregu Power Plc missed a scheduled N40.09 billion bond obligation,” and thereby “heightening investor concerns over the financial position of the power generation company ( Genco).” This default, it said, is tellingly “less than a year after the change of leadership at the organisation.”
The paper said the default specifically: “comes about eight months after billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola, exited the company in a landmark $750 million transaction that transferred his controlling interest to MA’AM Energy Limited in December 2025.”
It didn’t therefore come as a surprise that the following day, Arise News had a segment devoted to this Geregu matter on The Morning Show. That same Wednesday, yours truly decided on what this week’s piece should be.
But let me firstly ask you, are you thinking of the October issuance of the Federal Government Savings Bond? If you’re not, you’ve got more than a month to gather just the minimum amount needed to take advantage of the offer. Just five thousand naira (N5,000) is all you need to invest and become a Federal Government bond holder. How about that?
If you can cut out one thousand naira from your expenditure this very week and for four more weeks after, come the end of September, you’ll be ready to get your investing journey moving. The advantage of investing in the FGN own’s bond is that the federal government won’t default. Every quarter after October, you can simply watch the interest payment land in your account.
The interest rate is normally around 12 percent and may be smaller than the going rate offered by organisations like Geregu itself or other companies seeking to raise money in the capital market. The one determining factor for me is that my principal will come back. In other words, after the two or three-year tenure, I want my five thousand naira back.
As an aside, If you know any Geregu bond holders, you may want to speak to them and find out if they’re excited by the missed payment.
This is not to say Geregu won’t make the payment at the earliest opportunity, but you wouldn’t have to be raising any prayer points during Sunday service for your quarterly coupon (interest) payments with FGN savings bonds.
There’re many organisations raising money in the capital market and many don’t have a record of missed payment. This might even be a one time glitch for Geregu itself. The next quarterly payment due in October should tell us more.
While we wait for how things pan out then, remember to mind your own business. You do that by getting ready the minimum investment amount needed for the FGN Savings bond in October.
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Tunde Oyedoyin is a London-based personal finance coach and founder of Money Intelligence Coaching Academy, a specialist academy of personal finance. He can be reached as follows: +447846089587 (WhatsApp only); E-mail: tu5oyed@gmail.com
