Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was right. At a recent event, he lamented the culture of one administration throwing overboard the projects initiated by its predecessor, no matter their importance or the resources committed.
The former president described Nigeria as a burial ground for policies. The states are as guilty as the Federal Government in this unwholesome obsession, which rubbishes the dictum that government is a continuum. In 2011, then-president Goodluck Jonathan set up a committee to investigate the trend. The committee visited the 36 states and reported that 11,866 projects had been abandoned. Those projects include steel and power plants, housing and roads. This is sad, for if some of those projects were allowed to see the light of day and run properly, they would have changed Nigeria’s poor development profile.
Unfortunately, after these revelations by the Jonathan investigative panel, nothing was done about them.
This May, the Senate also set up a committee to investigate the abandoned projects. The Godswill Akpabio-led Senate gave the committee a month to conclude its investigation. Curiously, about five months later, nothing has been heard from the committee. This fuels the narrative that the best way to kill any issue in Nigeria is to constitute a panel to investigate it. The Ajaokuta Steel Complex in Kogi State was conceived in 1978 by the Obasanjo military administration to drive the country’s industrialisation. By 1991, the $650 million project had reached 98 per cent completion. It remains abandoned. Several power projects such as the 3.050MW Mambilla scheme in Taraba State, the 700MW hydropower plant in Zungeru, Niger State, and dams in Osun and Oyo states, were projected to boost electricity supply as well as control water.
These projects have been left to rot. Similar public-interest projects ranging from roads to housing schemes and crime-fighting plans are equally ignored. The fate of the 15-storey Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi that once housed the federal workforce and provided office spaces for the Ministries, Departments and Agencies is well documented. The iconic structures are now towering carcasses of shame useful only to street urchins, vagrants, and rodents.
The foundation blocks of the Plateau Olympic Stadium were laid in 1988 but the facility lies comatose after N7 billion was sunk into it and only needed N4 billion more to finish the job. The well-thought-out CCTV project to help in crime-fighting in Abuja is left in the cooler after gulping $460 million.
The result is a chaotic country bogged down by its burden of contrasts. Nigeria is rich in natural resources but it is poor and unable to take its place in the comity of nations. It is home to some of the best brains in the world but its prodigies are fleeing in droves to other lands in search of pastures green. There are enough rivers to generate adequate power but the people grope in darkness. The roads are so bad that the governors site unviable airports in their states to overfly the death traps that the roads have become.
The Chartered Institute of Project Managers of Nigeria puts the value of abandoned projects at N17 trillion. The institute believes poor project planning, an inefficient legal system, corruption, and weak institutions, among other factors, are to blame for the abandoned projects. Add to the list are pettiness, ego, and poor understanding of governance. A former state governor once spent resources chalking off anything that reminded him of his predecessor including photographs.
Abandoned projects hurt governance. Nigeria is 0.548 on the Human Development Index, which means it is poor at expanding its people’s choices and capabilities. Nigerians do not live valuable lives nor do they attain their full potential. They are also unsure of the future of their offspring.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 133 million Nigerians or 63 per cent of the population are in multidimensional poverty.
Most Nigerians are so poor that they cook with dung, wood or charcoal instead of clean energy. Their sanitation profile is as bad as their healthcare. They are poorly housed and poorly fed. Eighty-six million of them are said to be without electricity.
President of the African Development Bank, Akinwunmi Adesina, said the International Monetary Fund estimates that Nigeria loses about $29 billion annually, or 5.6 per cent of its GDP, due to a lack of reliable electricity. Consequently, Nigeria reportedly spends about $14 billion per year on power generators and fuel. This is a disaster. The abandoned power and dam projects would have saved the country from this embarrassing calamity.
The Nigerian leadership must quit pettiness and corruption, and revive worthy projects left to rot.
