Today, Nigeria is 57 years old as a sovereign nation. The country and its citizens are celebrating along with their friends and international allies who have, through various means, sent goodwill messages.
Unarguably, the country has some cause to celebrate and those who share this view have their reasons. One of such reasons is that obviously and most significantly, the country has increased in number. It has increased by over 200 percent from a population of about 50 million at Independence to well over 170 million at the moment. This is a good reason to cheer even though it has become the proverbial Fulani cattle’s head which is a burden on which the cattle balances.
Another reason is that the country is at peace, even if it is a fragile one, with itself unlike some other nations of the world, especially those of the Middle East, that are in perpetual strife- killing, maiming and destroying their present and future. Nigeria is also lucky for not being like other countries which are ravaged by both man-made and natural disasters, manifesting as wars, earthquakes or hurricanes Irma, Catherina, Maria, Harvey, etc.
Some Nigerians are celebrating this milestone because fate has continued to smile at them in spite of inhuman treatments and challenging socio-economic conditions they are subjected to by those who, in the name of leadership, have become predators, plundering and squandering their collective heritage and commonwealth, leaving them in tears, hunger, deprivation and perpetual want.
But the whole euphoria about increased population, fragile peace, cracked unity, gift of life, etc tappers to a very frustrating end, considering that this is a nation at 57, very good adult age when it should be consolidating on the growth and development it should have attained over the years.
Laughably and painfully too, Nigerians are burdened with a country that is clearly an anti-thesis in terms of development and economic growth in the past 57 years. For all well meaning sons and daughters of the country, reflecting on its stunted growth and rudderless sail arouses a melancholic and nostalgic feeling that banishes any mood for celebration.
Post independence up to the early years of the military in government, and also before the locusts invasion of the mid-80s to late 90s, Nigeria made giant strides in infrastructure development, leading to the building of rail lines in many parts of the country, long and well-paved roads, and iconic bridges such as the Third Mainland Bridge in the West and the Niger Bridge in the Eastern part of the country.
The country also invested massively in electricity, healthcare, airports and education infrastructure at secondary and tertiary levels, leading to the establishment of many federal universities, polytechnics, university teaching hospitals, primary and secondary healthcare centres, etc.
57 years after, the narrative has turned negative and the situation is such that while the population has grown and is still growing at an alarming rate with fast-paced urbanisation, infrastructure is at a standstill, hence the overarching pressure on the existing ones many of which have deteriorated almost irredeemably.
Today, Nigeria has the largest road network in West Africa and second largest in Sub-Saharan Africa. The total road network in the country is estimated at between 195,000km and 198,000km. About 2,627km of the roads are dualised. Roads in the country are owned by the three tiers of government. Approximately 18 percent is owned by the federal government, 16 percent by the state governments while 66 percent is owned by local governments. But the condition of these roads, without exception, is so terrible that only about 35 percent of the entire network is motorable.
This estimate is clearly conservative. In reality, motorable roads in Nigeria could be as small as 20 percent of the network. Whether one is talking about Enugu-Onitsha Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Lokoja-Kabba Road, Lagos-Benin-Ore Highway, or roads and bridges in Lagos, the story is basically the same.
Instead of new or well maintained infrastructure, what the country has seen in the last two decades are old roads with craters and ditches, hospitals that speak more of death than life, airports without simple lighting facilities, dead and impassable rail tracks, epileptic power supply, dry and falling water taps, decaying and deserted national monuments, etc and general lack of maintenance.
The decay in infrastructure in the country has reached a point where medical tourism has assumed an embarrassing dimension so much so that the country’s president had to spend over three months in a foreign hospital from where he was “forced home” by agitating citizens; health workers are presently on strike over lack of equipment in hospitals and issues bordering on poor condition of service. The education sector is under lock and key over failed infrastructure, unpaid salaries and poor funding, all of which have made teaching and learning almost impossible.
No new infrastructure is being built. What Nigerians hear frequently is award of contracts for reconstruction and rehabilitation of old roads that are never executed. In the last 18 years of democratic governance, public spending has been largely recurrent and minimally capital. Government has been budgeting about 15 percent of an annual budget of, say, N4 trillion for capital, which is only about N600 billion, and was funding barely half of that. In 2015 budget, for instance, only N18 billion was budgeted for all of Nigeria’s roads, N5 billion was budgeted for Power and N1.8 billion was budgeted for housing.
That Nigeria has infrastructure deficit is no longer news. That deficit requires trillions of naira to close which gave rise to the 30-year National Infrastructure Master-plan (NIM) that has, by default, opened huge investment opportunity for private sector operators in the housing sector of the economy. The NIM, which was released three years ago, estimated that the housing sector required US$300 billion investment over the next 30 years to close the lingering deficit conservatively put at 17 million units.
Governments seem not to understand that there is strong causal connection between urbanization and economic development in spite of arguments by development experts that no country has grown to middle income without urbanising; none has grown to high income without vibrant cities and this is because urban areas facilitate agglomeration of economies as costs are reduced through the learning, matching, and sharing of knowledge, labour, infrastructure, etc.
Undoubtedly, the challenges of urbanisation, according to Michael Wong of the World Bank, are there in terms of infrastructure for water supply, transportation, waste collection and disposal, and controlling air and water pollution just as there are also challenges in social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, urban housing, etc.
The greater challenge that infrastructure deficit and the decay of existing ones have imposed on Nigeria is a degraded environment. Apapa, the country’s sizzling port city, which is gradually but steadily degenerating into a wasteland, is a case study of infrastructure collapse that has locked in the city, degraded the environment and shut out potential economic and social activities the ports would have added to national income.
“In order to tackle the challenges to the environment, both federal and state governments should stimulate investment in infrastructure by providing funding solution for lenders by linking them with the capital markets; they should also leverage private capital through public private partnership (PPP) initiative”, Wong advised.
Deji Alli, CEO, Asset and Resource Management (ARM) Company Limited, agrees, canvassing a clearly articulated targets, need-based resource allocation, reviewing of existing development guidelines, development of integrated infrastructure and encouragement of PPP as a viable development initiative.
The importance of PPP initiative for public infrastructure provision cannot be over-emphasised because it is impossible for the governments alone to fully meet the nation’s infrastructure need without the involvement of the private sector, more so in the face of dwindling national revenue from oil sales.
This initiative is, however, under serious threat from the same governments whose officials do not respect terms of contracts and agreements, but see private investors in public infrastructure as either competitors or inferior partners and this, in the opinion of Wale Babalakin, chairman/CEO of Bi-Courtney Limited, will continue to work against the quest to overcome the current deficit in the provisions and maintenance of public infrastructure.
“From day one, government has violated every clause of the agreement with them to the extent that even the intervention of the regulatory body did not deliver a final solution. We have been to courts and we won at every court, but till today, we are denied 60 percent of our earnings because of the refusal to abide by the terms of the contract,” Babalakin recalled in reference to his company’s concessioning agreement with the federal government on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Similarly, in Lagos State, which could be described as the country’s largest construction market, both Lekki Concession Company (LCC) Limited and Frisland Properties, the concessionaires on Lekki-Epe Expressway and Falomo Shopping Centre, respectively, are licking their wounds from government’s inconsistency, leading to the termination of their concession agreements.
Perhaps, sitting back to lament missed opportunities of yesterday is not helpful at the moment. What is instructive, instead, is for the managers of government to understand that it is never too late to begin again and never stop until results are achieved.
Therefore, as recommended by Femi Akintunde, the CEO of Alpha Mead Facilities Management and Services Company Limited, “President Muhammadu Buhari must prioritise infrastructure development and this must include massive construction of roads network to be followed by a well articulated transport system to open up the country, especially the hinterlands and, by extension, the economy.”
CHUKA UROKO
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