The National Assembly has disclosed its plans to amend the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) Act to boost the effectiveness of Public Private partnership contracts in Nigeria.
Adamu Alero, Chairman, Senate Committee on works speaking at the 2019 joint Nigeria PPP network and PPP units consultative forum summit in Abuja, said that the National Assembly in its commitment to ensuring economic growth would amend the ICRC Act and develop laws that would attract both local and foreign private sectors investment into the country.
He said that PPP remained the only way to fast track infrastructural development in Nigeria, adding that the government cannot meet the infrastructural need in the country as it still struggles with its revenue generation.
“The 2020 budget has over 500 road projects to a tune of about N4 trillion to be funded by the federal government, of which the fund available is not more that N147 billion. Also, we have N50 billion housing deficit. In this situation we have no option other than the PPP arrangements,” he said.
“We at the Senate will come up with a robust legislature around the ICRC act to ensure it meets the requirement. The National Assembly will continue to partner with all agencies to ensure that PPP succeed in Nigeria,” he added.
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Speaking further, the Senator stressed that there was an urgent need to fix the infrastructural deficit across the country as Nigeria in the next 10-15 years would one of the countries with the highest population in the world.
“For us to curb the possible challenge that poor infrastructure may bring to us in future, we at the senate will work to come up with laws that will attract the private sectors investment, laws that will promote security across the country. Unfortunately many policy makers still think that the government can and should fund all project, and this is unacceptable”, he said.
Chidi Izuwah, Director-General, ICRC, in his remark said that with the regulatory guidance of the ICRC, the Federal Government has approved $8 billion to Public Private Partnership projects between 2010 and 2018.
Izuwah said that the conference seeks to identify as well as promote the development of bankable PPP projects in Nigeria with a view to accessing project funding from African Export Import Bank.
“The idea of the joint forum of strategic enablers within the PPP ecosystem is to strengthen synergy among key policy drivers across the PPP environment in Nigeria. This is expected to help address the common challenges as well as serve as a catalyst for growth in the use of PPP as a preferred procurement option across the states of the federation.”
Speaking further, Izuwah said that as at June 2019, there were 69 post-contract PPP projects under implementation at the ICRC Projects disclosure Portal. “As at the end of October, the Commission has granted nine Outline Business Case and nine Full Business Case Compliance Certificates for 2019”.
Also speaking at the conference, Lateef Shittu, Executive Director, Strategy and Research, Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), in his remark said PPP had proven to be a veritable platform for addressing the huge infrastructure deficit in the country as 20 states had passed the Public Private Partnership law and set up offices.
“NGF understood the importance of PPP to infrastructure development and this is why states are being encouraged to put in place measures to encourage PPP projects. We would continue to drive the campaign until all the states of the federation identity with the PPP initiative as a solution for infrastructure development”.
He noted that the country is in an era where states can barely meet their financial obligations amidst dwindling revenues, adding that there was a need for creative use of the PPPs model through the Build, Operate and Transfer mechanism to meet the infrastructural need in the states.
Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, Minister of finance, budget and national planning, said that promoting partnership with the private sector was critical as the governments do not have the required fund to meet the infrastructural need in the country.
“The amount required to attain 70% stock of the GDP cannot be provided by the government alone. Even the amount we allocated to these projects in the budget are often nothing compared to what we really need, hence there is an urgent need for us to promote PPP projects across the country”.
The minister who was represented by Isah Halidu, Director of infrastructure, stressed that the government would stand with the National Assembly by creating the right environment that attracts investors into the country.
