NIGERIAA'S INFRASTRUCTURE LANDSCAPE

This book begins with a simple observation: Nigeria does not lack infrastructure ideas, plans or ambition. It has a national master plan, a body of enabling legislations, a federal concession regulator and a long list of projects that have been announced, studied and reviewed. What the country lacks is the connective tissue that turns a plan into a bankable, built and well-maintained asset: clear institutional responsibility, disciplined project preparation, contracts that allocate risk realistically and a state that behaves as a predictable counterparty.
I came to this view from inside the machinery of government and from the private-sector side of the table. Service as Technical Secretary to a Presidential Inter-Ministerial Committee on Infrastructure showed me how much depends on coordination between agencies that each hold part of the answer. Later work with the Nigerian Infrastructure Development Association (NIDA) showed me how the same difficulties look to the developers, lenders and advisers who must commit capital against them.
This book therefore, is more about institutions and contracts than engineering and construction. I have tried to write it so that an investor can see where the risks sit, a lawyer or adviser can see how they are allocated in practice, and a public official can see what a prepared, financeable project looks like.