FG’s criminal abandonment of government projects

Anyone living in Nigeria needs a shock therapy from time to time, unless perhaps one does not listen to news or follow up with trending stories. Few days back I learnt from the news that there are over 500 abandoned federal government projects in Akwa Ibom State alone! The revelation was made by a Commissioner in the State. How could that be? But then, I remember that this is Nigeria where anything goes. A Sunday, June 28, 2015 report in the Daily Trust says that the Director of Administration of Chartered Institute of Project Management of Nigeria, Mr. David Godswill Okoronkwo stated in an exclusive interview with the newspaper that there are approximately 56, 000 abandoned government projects across the country. He listed them according to geopolitical zones. In his words,  “South-east has 15,000, South-west, 10,000: South-south, 11,000: North-west, 6,000: North-central, 7,000: North-east, 5,000 and Abuja, 2,000.” All these projects were estimated at N12trn.

Earlier on March 4, 2010, former President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated 20 man Ibrahim Bunu led Presidential Projects Assessment Committee to among other things take inventory of all federal government projects, assess level of funding, and project status. The committee on June 2, 2011 submitted its report to the ex-president. It made an inventory of 11,886 on-going projects (as at then) with N7.78tn estimated cost out of which FG had paid N2.696tn to contractors leaving a balance of about N5tn. Volume one of the report shows that of the geo-political zones, South-South zone had 1,755 projects amounting to N2.1tn followed by North Central zone with N630bn with 1,844 projects. The last in ranking is North East zone with 466 projects amounting to N98bn.

A July 2, 2017 report in The Guardian on Sunday says that Akwa Ibom Integrity Group published over 300 projects abandoned by the Niger Delta Development Commission in the State. Leader of the Group Chief Okon Jim alleged that the Commission abandoned a total of 121 rural roads, 75 classroom blocks, 69 rural water schemes, 43 mini-electrification projects among others across the state.

While the bulk of the abandoned projects are those initiated by the federal government. State governments and indeed local governments are equally complicit in this ignoble and criminal game of abandoning projects. Just last Sunday, October 22, 2017, The Nation newspaper published a features story where it detailed how seven states namely Abia, Rivers, Niger, Ogun, Plateau, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom states wasted billions on uncompleted projects. The newspaper cited the example of the Monorail Project in Rivers State, which was conceived and began by the former governor of the state, now Minister of Transportation, Chibuike  Rotimi Amaechi, in his first tenure as governor in 2008. It was designed to cover 12 kilometres at the cost of N50bn. Unfortunately; it was abandoned at the point of 2.6 kilometres when the former governor completed his second tenure in office. Sources said the work already done as at then, which was described as Phase 1A, gulped N33.9bn.

Other abandoned projects in the seven states with their estimated contract sum as published by the newspaper include: Minna Airport City awarded at the cost of $600m, Minna five-star Hotel – N19.6bn, Abia International  Hotel – N6bn to complete and would need about $25m to expand,  Jos Main Market — N5bn to rebuild, Bayelsa Hotel —N13.9bn, Ibom Tropicana —N33bn, Ibom Specialist Hospital (completed but shut down)—N41bn.

Is it not very heart rending that a country with high level of infrastructural deficit will initiate these plethora of capital projects and abandon them? Why start a project you do not intend to complete? What’s the value for money in this mindless pastime of our administrators?  Who benefits from this criminal neglect of capital projects?

The Ibrahim Bunu led Presidential Projects Assessment Committee blamed mass failure of public projects over the years to corruption, inadequate budgetary provision, poor project conceptualization and institutional mediocrity. Bunu noted that following the committee’s in-depth assessment of many of the projects, “there is indeed evidence of large scale, widespread institutional mediocrity, deficiency of vision and a lack of direction in project management, which result in poor conceptualization, poor design and faulty execution. Needless to add that this has resulted in avoidable loses of billions of naira to the government.” Considering the fact that this report was submitted to federal government six years ago, why has there been no conscious effort by the immediate past and indeed the present administration to have a paradigm shift on capital projects initiation and implementation?

From the initial statistics earlier reeled out in this piece, it would be noted that non-completion of capital projects has been continuing with reckless abandon even under this present Buhari administration. This is sad! I would have thought that President Buhari would have demonstrated courage to implement the PPAC report knowing that government is a continuum. What I thought this current administration would have done different would have been to categorise the abandoned and uncompleted federal government projects to those it can fund, those that are white elephants that needs to be auctioned off to the public as well as those it wants to complete through public-private-partnership. In fact, government can use the proceed from those auctioned abandoned projects to complete the viable ones it needs resources to complete.

If Buhari had concentrated energy and resources on completing most of the thousands of abandoned projects it would have bridged the infrastructure deficit of this country and would have had a lot more to showcase in terms of projects completion in its two and half years in office. For me this is a low hanging fruit that should be plucked. Of what point is the craze to initiate a new project when you’re not sure of completing it in the lifetime of your administration?  As experience has shown, successors are hardly interested in completing the projects of their predecessors even if they belong to same political party. This is untoward. Many of the abandoned project sites have been taken over by weeds, delinquents and reptiles thereby posing environmental hazards to law abiding members of the public. This unwholesome practice should be discontinued by all tiers and arms of government. If you can’t get the resources to complete a project, simply get the private sector to build, operate and transfer or better still, auction it off.