Nigeria’s infrastructure across board is in bad shape. Most major roads and bridges are in dilapidated condition and require major repairs; the power sector is still bedevilled by sundry issues, the health and education sectors are equally in poor condition. Fixing these problems could create millions of jobs; curb the rising unemployment, reduce crime rate, and return the recessed economy to a sustainable growth path.
The United States drew itself out of the 1930s Great Depression through massive infrastructure investments. In fact, established countries like United Kingdom and Germany invest nonstop huge sums of money to ensure the continuous operation of their creaking old infrastructure networks, while many developing nations are starting from a rather clean slate and are even investing big in latest technologies.
At an advocacy roundtable organised last year, by the Nigeria-British Chamber of Commerce in Lagos, experts posited that the desired national economic development will remain a mere wish that cannot be achieved unless necessary actions are taken to bridge the infrastructure gap.
Managing Director, African Finance Corporation (AFC), said Andrew Alli, who spoke on ‘Achieving Sustainable Development through Infrastructure -The Role of the AFC.’, argued that for a sustainable infrastructure development to happen, policy instability, poor legal and political framework, lack of a holistic view of national planning, lack of coordination between government agencies as well as limited capacity of civil servants must be addressed.
He stressed that stakeholders must tackle infrastructure challenges creatively, target private sector funding and integrate training and job creation components into projects from conception, adding government must also ensure a favourable environment that would ease cost of doing business.
He attributed project failure in Nigeria to overestimate revenue and growth potential, insufficient attention to mitigating and controlling risk at the design phase, lack of confidence between the project stakeholders, ability to monitor project development and predict emerging risks and poor planning of asset operation.
Share this
