ABUJA: Nigeria on Friday formally scrapped its inefficient and graft-ridden electricity firm and handed its assets to private investors in a bid expected to improve power supplies in Africa's most populous nation.

The investors who have become beneficiaries of the nation's privatization drive include Seoul-based Korea Electric Power Corporation as well as local investors.

"The PHCN (Power Holding Company of Nigeria) has essentially ceased to exist," Power Minister Chinedu Nebo said at a brief ceremony while handing over the Abuja (power) Distribution Company to its new owner.

"We now have distribution, generation and transmission companies. So, it is no longer PHCN," Nebo said. The privatization of PHCN has long been in the works in Africa's most populous nation and second largest economy, where blackouts occur multiple times daily despite the country's status as the continent's largest oil producer.

From PHCN, Nigeria has created 18 successor firms comprising 11 for electricity distribution, 6 for power generation and one for transmission.