Infrastructure development in Nigeria: Where do we want to go?

All countries have unique, inimitable and exceptional strengths (and weaknesses) around which their infrastructure ought to be built. Reflecting these to enhance the country’s competitive edge and to mitigate vulnerabilities should be the key focus of infrastructure planning. For example where nature’s gifts (human and natural resources) are abundant, development should be targeted at infrastructure that will support secondary industries that will add value to the naturally occurring resources and the optimisation of cost effective labour. This means that beyond the basics of transportation, energy and water; infrastructure must be customised to address the peculiarities of geography, culture, time and space.

At a recent forum with a serving federal minister, the phrase “like they do in (China, India, England, Malaysia, USA, etc.) … “ was used so often that understanding what the national vision is was difficult. Whilst not advocating the reinvention of the wheel, we cannot seriously want to do things like they do in different countries (all at the same time) because we are not in the same circumstances of socio-economic or cultural development, time or space.

The vision of  our leaders should be steered by factors that are particular to that country (like the demographic characteristics, trends, cultural tendencies, law enforcement capabilities, etc.) and must be clear and well coordinated across government departments. Infrastructure solutions that do not consider who we are or where we are on the evolutionary scale of socio-economic development as well as where we would like to go amongst other factors will almost certainly fail or yield sub-optimal returns.

Any leader that does not take the enforcement of our laws and statutes seriously will never achieve his/her goals for the country. This must be one of the starting points.

Here are examples of how countries leverage their unique characteristics and

circumstances in infrastructure development:

According to Miller (2007), China’s infrastructure development is currently geared towards regional planning and the efficient transportation of its huge population and goods within the country. This, perceptibly, addresses China’s current challenge of how best to facilitate the efficient movement of its massive productive workforce to maximize employment and to support their quest for higher efficiencies in energy and resource utilisation. They also have a mission to become the world’s largest and most cost effective manufacturers.

Japan’s recent push has been to keep a steady and consistent hand on the wheels that will maintain and heighten their technological leadership globally. They are taking advantage of their pole position in technological infrastructure and their highly educated population to pay more attention on research and development at the extreme edge of inventiveness.

A good example of how Americans have successfully exploited their unique ability for entrepreneurial risk taking and audacious, “think outside the box” tendencies to create a unique connection between their infrastructure development and commerce is through the development of the Silicon Valley concept and cyber technology. Americans have also positioned themselves to benefit most from whatever results from its space exploration programmes for which they have built and are still building unrivalled infrastructure to support.

Because they are a uniquely large country with high labour costs, Americans paid a relatively higher price than other countries for the efficient physical transportation of documents, however their development and application of cyber infrastructure has led to significant reductions in costs associated with such intra-continental logistics including costs associated with delivery lead times. These may on the long run compensate for the challenges in maintaining and protecting their physical transportation and communication infrastructure.

Being a much smaller country, the British have different infrastructure challenges, which are bound to be different from America’s.  Their relatively smaller size, political and social circumstances require and allow them to build efficient and cost effective public service transportation systems that the Americans do not require or have. They are regarded as the financial services capital of the world and have over the years developed infrastructure that keeps them highly competitive in this space.

What is noteworthy about these examples is that: 1) The local content of their effort is much more significant than ours. 2) Initiatives are usually pursued in concert with many arms of the government and private institutions. 3) The people and their way of life are major considerations.

The United Kingdom is currently planning to build the (approximately 120-mile) HS2 high-speed rail and has decided that about 2000 indigenous engineers must be recruited and trained in the UK for this purpose. This is against the backdrop suggestion that because China has had experience building more than 6,000 miles of the same type of system, Chinese engineers should be considered for the project. Does this resonate with us?! Infrastructure development is a major tool for human capital development and dealing with unemployment.

South Korea focused on the development of basic infrastructure at the end of the Korean War and has developed in incremental steps of innovation (and replication) since then to move from one of Asia’s poorest countries to the top 20 in the league of national wealth. They took stock of who they are, where they were after the war and used what they had to move on.

The point here is that infrastructure development in Nigeria ought to be pursued with our God given peculiarities in mind. Trying to be like as many other countries as possible at the same time will lead to chaos, missed opportunities for human capital development and massive capital leakages.

All countries must start from the same basic (subsistence) position of developing their own law enforcement, transportation, communication and energy infrastructure to their own cultural, social and technological needs and standards. It is upon these that all others initiatives required for pursuing unique strategic advantages rest.

For the reason that our law enforcement, transportation, communication and energy infrastructure are still rudimentary, our efforts should be geared towards getting these right first before launching satellites into space. As a country, we should unpretentiously accept that our immediate target is the subsistence level of infrastructure development because we are currently beneath this level. With our high level of unemployment, our solutions should include a higher local labour content so that a competent skills base can be developed in our people whilst at the same time, reducing unemployment levels.

Our infrastructure development effort should be used to open up the agrarian economy and to develop semi-secondary , small-scale industries in remote places. We simply do not need complicated infrastructure at this point of our development and will be better served by staying away from non-essential high tech investments. Sooner than later, entrepreneurs will occupy the spaces of opportunity presented by our natural progression.

The indiscriminate procurement of infrastructure solutions from anyone that seems to have it without adequate consideration of the best fit for the country will ultimately hurt us.

Countries in our situation are always vulnerable to unproductive schemes when assets procured are not socially acceptable or don’t quite address their needs. Social acceptability is enhanced when the owners of the assets are given a role in the selection and creation of the assets. The pertinent considerations amongst others are who the primary beneficiaries should be (local industry or foreign investors) why the investment is being made, who our national competitors are and what we are competing for? In addition, how the investment will be maintained, sustained and expanded without jeopardising the country’s ultimate self-sufficiency and independence.

This is why it can be said that whether we like it or not, the eventual solution that will sustain our economic growth and national independence will be predominantly Nigerian in content.

America’s foreign policy leads them to pay more attention to militarised infrastructure contrasts with a country like Norway that has chosen to focus inwards in spite of their vast wealth. What is our outlook?

Tunde Sodade