In this article Tunde Ajia examines the infrastructure challenges and opportunities arising in Nigeria during a period of unprecedented growth and economic expansion. Tunde undertakes a detailed review of different infrastructure sectors identifying particular sectoral challenges and common cross-cutting themes. Tunde also notes the particular strain that the COVID-19 pandemic is currently placing on Nigeria’s infrastructure. Tunde concludes by calling for an urgent re-examination of a wider range of infrastructure delivery models, including public-private partnerships, in order to leverage developments in innovation and learn from experiences elsewhere in the world.

Over the next decade, the population of Africa is estimated to exceed 1.7 billion – representing over half of the estimated global population growth - and Africa’s population is expected to double by the year 2050. Harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources to sustainably support this population growth and enable African nations to reach their potential is a critical task but remains difficult and expensive.

A key impediment continues to be the African continent’s infrastructure deficit. The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) (2019) suggested that while $100.8 billion of investments were committed to infrastructure in 2018 (an all-time high) this still fell considerably short of the up to $170 billion per annum necessary to close Africa’s infrastructure gap by 2025.

Of the $100.8 billion identified by the ICA as being committed, a majority came from agencies, institutions and national governments such as the World Bank, United Nations and China. In contrast, only 25.7% was pledged by the private sector where, as this article will argue, there is enormous potential for infrastructure investment.

Bringing together all 55 member states of the African Union, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been established to highlight the need for further private infrastructure development in the region. The AfCFTA will create one of the largest single free trade areas for the free movement of goods, services, people and investments in the world.

With a market of 1.2 billion people and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion, this new free market could increase intra-African trade by at least a third while doubling the size of the manufacturing sector and creating millions of new jobs. However, all of this depends on how the individual challenges facing each member state are met.

Nigeria’s economy and infrastructure provision

The provision of social amenities, services, utilities, and physical infrastructure was the sole responsibility of the Nigerian Government during the colonial era and this has generally continued following independence. The private sector has largely not been involved in this part of the economy although this has started to change as inefficiencies in government infrastructure provision have become increasingly apparent.

Studies such as that by Taiwo (2013) have identified these inefficiencies as including a heavy and cumbersome bureaucracy resulting in high cost of delivery, improper planning, political interference, inadequate managerial, human and technical, conceptual, and design skills, lack of accountability and transparency, inappropriate economic settings, as well as inadequate capital and lack of appreciation of free inter-play of market forces of demand and supply. Even before the current COVID-19 pandemic this had already led to a closer examination of infrastructure investment and delivery in the Nigerian economy.

Nigeria provides the quintessential example of the challenges presently facing Africa. It is the most populous country in Africa with a population of 200 million, and according to World Data Lab (2020), over 95 million (48%) were living in extreme poverty by January 2020. Nigeria’s economy is also the largest in Africa (by GDP) at $519 billion but is expected to contract by 2.3% in Q1, and 1.8% in Q2 of 2020. These projections precede the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current oil price war between Russia and OPEC+.

The impact of COVID-19 on Nigeria’s economy

In December 2019, China experienced the outbreak of the Corona virus disease (now shortened to COVID-19) in the city of Wuhan, China. Within a space of three months, the virus had spread to other countries of the world necessitating the declaration of ‘social distancing’ in a bid to stem the rate at which the disease was spreading. Governments all over the world – even those that had relatively few virus cases - had to embark on lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were issued, tests were also simultaneously conducted to identify infected individuals for quarantine.

The aggressive nature of the virus’ spread which necessitated a lockdown of economies has started to have negative impacts on economies to such an extent that economic projections are now being reviewed downwards. The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to significantly negatively impact the world economy, and it is expected to enter a recession in a few months, due to the widespread disruptions brought about by pandemic response measures. According to the IMF (2020), global growth is expected to nosedive from 2.9% in 2019 to -3.0% in 2020, which is lower than during the 2008-09 financial crises. Following this trend, real GDP is expected to contract by -1.6% in 2020, this is nearly 5.2% points lower than what was projected in 2019.

These rapid economic changes reflect the impact of the continuous spread of COVID-19, as well as the sudden drop in the price of oil by about 50% reaching an 18-year low. As a result of this and a lull in most other commodity prices, the world’s financial condition has been tightened in 2020, as investors have withdrawn more than $90 billion from emerging markets as a result of the crises, representing the largest capital flow on record (IMF, 2020).

The leadership of the Nigerian legislature met in the last week of March 2020 to review Nigeria’s 2020 budget estimates (Tabiowo, 2020). Presently, the worst-case-scenario stares Nigerian economic planners in the face with an expected contraction rate of 3.5% in Q2, and 4.6% in Q3, and 5.2% in Q4 all of 2020.

Policy makers in Nigeria therefore face unprecedented economic and health crises as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic therefore has significant ramifications for infrastructure provision in Nigeria. Appropriate and timely policy responses are required, including not just increased public health expenditure to provide necessary emergency health services (including using emergency health infrastructure funds appropriated by the Federal Government) but also broader economic policy.

Nigeria’s infrastructure approach - a central focus on oil

More than ever the future of Nigeria therefore depends on its ability to build and modernize its infrastructure - and Nigerian governments are aware of this. Back in 2015, a 30-year plan was created for the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) (National Planning Commission 2015); the plan focused on core infrastructure development at an estimated cost of $3 trillion. NIIMP resonates with recommendations made in the World Bank (2003) report in which the revered institution underscored the fact that ‘Sound infrastructure development policy setting is a key ingredient for sustainable long-term growth’.

However, in Nigeria, there is a chasm between the country’s ambitious infrastructure agenda and available financial resources. The investment gap is further widened by Nigeria’s rising national debt. Between 2015-18 Nigeria spent $17.84 billion servicing debts (according to the government’s debt management office), representing two thirds of total revenues due to the federal government after all allocations to states and local government. Nigeria’s finance minister Zainab Ahmed, speaking in May 2019, stated that ₦2.45 trillion is being budgeted to service debt in 2020; however, the IMF has predicted this figure could rise significantly to 36% of GDP by 2024.

Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer and remains heavily dependent on crude oil, which as an entity represents 90% of foreign currency earnings and 70% of government income. Daily crude production in Nigeria has consistently exceeded the 1.7 million-barrel OPEC-approved benchmark (Udo, 2018), to 2.323 million barrels (The Premium Times, 2019). This underscores the fact that the country’s age-old status as a mono-product economy is yet to abate despite concerted efforts to boost agricultural production (Oxford Business Group, 2015) and support industrialization by providing the enabling environment (Gberevbie and Isiave-Ogbari, 2007, Salaudeen, 2019).

Nigeria has the tenth largest crude reserves yet spends $3.5bn yearly on fuel subsidies, equating to four times the total expenditure that could be diverted into building schools and health centers. Further compounding the problem are aging and underperforming refineries. These dilapidated structures built in the 1960s and 1970s continue to operate below capacity; opinion is divided on whether, in the face of declining oil revenues, it is better to rehabilitate them or rebuild from scratch.

Mallam Mele Kyari, CEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, speaks of a fresh impetus; predicting that refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna will be refining crude oil at optimum capacity by 2022 (Projects Today 2019). This effort suggests a potential avenue for huge savings that can be allocated to other underfunded sectors in Nigeria.

But how soon will improving the refineries help the oil-dependent economy and subsidy regime? Important legislation, such as the Petroleum Industry Bill, is one potential solution to help unlock investment in this area. Although it has been agreed on by parliament, it has yet to be approved - many stakeholders hope this will occur before the end of 2020.

Other major Nigerian infrastructure challenges and opportunities

Growth in other sectors outside of oil is slow, yet successful diversification is as critical as ever to future growth and prosperity. A step in the right direction has been taken with the Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP), launched in 2016 to create a roadmap that will wean Nigeria off oil revenues and stimulate a business environment conducive to the development of a diversified economy.

The ERGP has resulted in some success; Nigeria has moved up 15 places in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index (ranking 131 out of 190 countries, up 39 places since 2016) (Salaudeen 2019). Further, the economy is beginning to show signs of increasing diversification in some key sectors such as agriculture and consumer goods industry, but structural problems thwart speedy growth in manufacturing, retail and banking sectors.

Unfortunately the Nigerian geographic terrain is also littered with abandoned infrastructure projects. In 2011 the Federal Government established a Projects Assessment Committee which identified and recorded 11,866 projects that have been abandoned for a myriad of reasons.

There is, however, still vast potential for large infrastructure projects within the country, particularly in mainstream sectors such as energy and power, transportation, water, sanitation, healthcare, and education. These are the sectors which form the foundation for socioeconomic development: creating employment, reducing poverty, increasing disposable income, improving the environment and enhancing standards of living.

Electricity infrastructure

For example, Nigeria’s power infrastructure has been often been referred to as a national embarrassment (Ukanwah 2018). In 2014 only 4,000 megawatt hours were generated, when a population of the size of Nigeria’s would be expected to require closer to 15,000 megawatt hours. As a result only 45% of the population has access to the electricity grid which, in any event, highly unreliable. Secondary power systems (mostly diesel-powered generators) are common and most factories rely, at great expense, on their own energy generation.

The absence of reliable electricity power is a major constraint on the cost competitiveness of Nigerian products and stunts development of manufacturing and industrial space. The creation of a national power infrastructure that would deliver efficient and reliable power would result in economies of scale and lower costs. Major investment opportunities, which could be attractive to private sector businesses, exist in upscaling power distribution and increasing power plant usage, both at the macro level and through community-based industrialization projects.

Healthcare infrastructure

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the decayed state of the Nigerian healthcare delivery system and its infrastructure. The present infrastructure is mostly worn and need extensive upgrades having been mostly built around the independence of Nigeria in 1960, and left to rot over the years for lack of maintenance. For instance, the University College Hospital, Ibadan was commissioned in 1957, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital  was commissioned in 1962, and the University of Benin Teaching Hospital was commissioned in 1973. Akinsete (2016) reported that as at 2015, there were more than 3,500 healthcare institutions in Nigeria with about 27% being owned by the public sector.

Nigeria’s healthcare infrastructure has suffered from years of neglect as a result of the Nigerian Government’s nonchalant attitude towards the implementation of maintenance policy. The private sector-owned institutions are priced beyond the reach of the masses, and laws in the sector are hardly enforced. According to Chijioke (2018), the bulk of policies and laws in the healthcare sector lay dormant without implementation, and this is coupled with fragmentation of services, a dearth of medical resources, inadequate and decaying infrastructure, and inequity in resource allocation, as well as the population’s lack of access to healthcare.

Akinsete (2016) highlighted the imperative for Nigerian tertiary healthcare institutions to explore innovative approaches for closing the yawning healthcare infrastructure gap, and that this can be achieved by exploring mutually rewarding partnerships with the private sector to drive healthcare infrastructure delivery projects. Akinsete (2016) further suggested that policy makers in the public sector healthcare institutions should identify bankable expansion projects that will significantly contribute to growth objectives through their alignment with market demand and supply trends. To realise these projects, a public-private partnership structure was suggested, and a suitable framework for selecting suitable private entity partners will also be adopted based on established regulations.     

Transport infrastructure

There are 197,000 km of federal roads in Nigeria, yet only 18% of these are paved with most in poor condition. Rising traffic volumes exacerbate the situation by creating congestion and delays that have predictably adverse economic consequences. Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, is home to 20 million people. According to BusinessDay (2019), the Lagos State Government estimated in 2015 that living with frequent traffic gridlock in Lagos has an estimated cost of $1.7 billion per annum. Most factories are in the south west away from Lagos and other ports, requiring long distances to be covered in order to reach other parts of Nigeria. An efficient railway system is a potential solution to achieving faster intra-country commerce. Realising this, the government of Nigeria in 2006 approved a US$40 billion 25-year strategic plan for the modernization of rail transportation in Nigeria (Oyefuga and Egbetokun 2007).

Private sector participation is now seen as a necessary prerequisite for development of new transportation linkages. There is some evidence of this in projects such as the Abuja Light Railway System and the new terminal at Abuja’s international airport. Similarly, in 2017 the Nigerian government announced plans to attract private sector investment by awarding reconstruction contracts for 69 highways and arterial roads. And in March 2019 the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, proposed floating a $27 billion bond to be used on road, rail, aviation and maritime development.

Tax incentive schemes also offer investors other opportunities to contribute to the economy. For example in 2017 a scheme called the ‘Road Trust Fund’ was instituted before being renamed the ‘Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme’ (PWC 2019).  This scheme was created with the objective of incentivising private sector participants to collectively fund road projects through the opportunity to enjoy specific tax credits as well as recoup 100% of costs incurred. There is also the opportunity of tax holidays which have been pre-arranged as part of clauses inserted into eligible infrastructure project contracts.

Congestion in the two ports located in Lagos is compounded by bureaucracy and ageing infrastructure, all of which contributed to losses of $9.7 billion for Nigeria’s maritime hubs in 2018 (Oxford Business Group 2019). The symptoms of these problems include increases in shipping costs; as an example the cost of clearing a 40-foot container in Lagos went up 400% in Q4 2018.

Further traffic delays and gridlock at port access routes affect importers and exporters alike, increasing haulage costs and complicating quality concerns where perishable goods are involved. The Oxford Business Group (2019) estimates that the average annual loss of agricultural products and perishables due to port handling rose to $10 billion in 2018.

New port construction – such as the Bakassi Deep Seaport Project – is now being planned with the help of Chinese investors and public-private partnerships. It is expected that this initiative will reduce the hardship experienced by importers and exporters within the maritime industry.

Agricultural infrastructure

As part of efforts to diversify Nigeria’s economy there is also a particular focus on agriculture. Less than 40% of Nigeria’s 84 million hectares of arable land are currently under cultivation, yet Nigeria is a net importer of foodstuffs. Why is this? A key problem again is the quality of infrastructure provision. Insufficient transportation links between rural areas and urban concentrations of consumers limit access to domestic markets. Furthermore, a lack of storage facilities, unreliable power supply and limited quality control / food safety certification limit the capacity to export to European Union countries or the United States.

Cassava and yams represent over 50% of all Nigerian agricultural production with 50 million tonnes produced in 2016. However, infrastructure provision in the form of affordable transportation and well-equipped processing centres limits the development potential of these products – for example, as processed foods including flour, beer, chips, and glucose.

Water infrastructure

Similarly, Nigeria is blessed with ample water resources (many of its 36 states are named after rivers) however, in 2015 only 19% of Nigeria’s population had access to safe drinking water (The Conversation 2017). A lack of readily available, reliable and safe drinking water combined with poor sanitation and hygiene (only 33% of the population had access to basic sanitation) is estimated to cost Nigeria about $1.3 billion in healthcare and accessibility.

Nigeria’s National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy, approved in 2000, encourages private sector participation and envisages reforms being made at the state level. While this appears a helpful solution, in practice very little has happened.

In 2011 the state announced plans to build ten new wastewater plants with the help of private investors; again these have yet to be completed. It is cause for concern that, in a country with abundant water resources, standards set by the World Health Organization are not being met due to ineffective management of water infrastructure.

More efficient management of water resources is imperative to Nigeria providing the most basic requirements to its citizens. Nigeria must consider a wider range of stakeholders when drafting reforms; drawing in public-private partnerships and private sector investors who can provide the funding, expertise and knowledge required to establish appropriate policies and practices will ensure that successful reforms are designed and put into place.

The scale of Nigeria’s infrastructure challenge and emerging responses

The value of Nigeria’s total infrastructure stock is just 35% of GDP (Deloitte 2018), whereas South Africa boasts a stock worth 87% of GDP and the average for emerging economies is 70%. The scale of Nigeria’s infrastructure underfunding is immense. The World Bank estimates that to fill Nigeria’s infrastructure gaps $14.2 billion will need to be spent per annum for the next ten years (Foster and Pushak 2011).

Currently the government spends $6 billion per annum on infrastructure. However, in order to bridge this gap, it is critical that Nigeria attracts more private sector capital and professional expertise.

Central to attracting overseas investors is the establishment of trust and political stability. The fact that President Buhari is now in his second four-year term and the increasingly business-friendly environment that has emerged since civilian rule returned 20 years ago should support this (Oxford Business Group 2019).

The government’s direct actions to encourage infrastructure investment is also important. For example, in March 2019 the then-Minister for Trade and Development Okechukwu Enelamah announced plans to accelerate infrastructure investment as a key element in increasing revenue generation. He said the government would seek to increase infrastructure spending to reach the $10 billion - $20 billion range over the next 5-10 years.

Minister of Finance , Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed similarly underscored the importance of investment in infrastructure when she outlined that Nigeria “… intend[s] to borrow, both locally and internationally, improve on local borrowing, introduce an infrastructure bond and identify or enhance revenue streams” (Oxford Business Group, 2019). The government would do this, she said, by partnering with other stakeholders to raise funding. The new investment program would offer investors opportunities to capitalize on Nigeria’s appetite for debt as well as long-term benefits arising from greater efficiencies in executing infrastructure improvements.

The potential role of public-private partnerships

At its conference in Cairo in November 2019, the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) called for enhanced partnerships between the public and private sectors (Tsedeke 2019) to develop infrastructure projects in industries covering energy, transport, water and ICT.

The benefits of such public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often citied to include value for money (greater efficiencies using private sector skills), faster delivery (using private sector capacity and flexibility), increased investment (the introduction of private sector finance), a longer-term approach (not driven by short-term budget pressures and political tenure), improved service delivery (each partner operating within their sphere of expertise) and private sector growth and stability (secure longer-term investments underwritten by government contracts).

While appealing in theory the PPP approach is not without challenges. In practical implementation developing countries such as Nigeria have reported difficulties in the adoption of PPP including for the delivery of infrastructure projects. Babatunde et al. (2013) identifies eight main challenges affecting PPP infrastructure delivery in Nigeria: inadequate knowledge, poor levels of skills and capacity by public and private sector participants, poor evaluation, poor monitoring and due diligence by governments, non-competitive bidding, signing of contract with no design and evidence of financing, difficulty accessing credit facility from both local and international banks, land acquisition problems, failure of risk allocations between government and the concessionaire; and the politicisation of concessions. Although Nigeria is generally well regarded for its policy-making capacity, the frameworks upon which those policies are based are often weak and are therefore at risk of being sabotaged by the factors identified (Sanni et al. 2015).

It is noted, however, that the main identified drawbacks of PPP are ‘man-made’ and, as such, they are potentially able to be managed through stronger implementation of PPP laws and more effective policy frameworks. For example, it is well established that requiring effective risk management can help reduce the risks associated with the PPP model. In the context of concession contracts, as a particular form of PPP, Sanni et al., (2015) established that effective risk allocation is a critical success factor. While they warn that both the public and private sectors should refrain from embarking on concession contracts without adequate understanding of the merits, disadvantages and critical success factors, they conclude that appropriate frameworks can significantly enhance risk allocation in concession contracts.

There will inevitably be challenges in delivering infrastructure in Nigeria through PPP models and these challenges need to be clearly recognised and provided for. Nonetheless, and in light of the government’s continued inability to otherwise provide the necessary infrastructure for the country’s wellbeing and growth (due to limited human and financial resources), PPPs provide an important alternative mechanism for infrastructure delivery worth considering further.

Conclusion: Nigeria as an economic powerhouse

This article has outlined major infrastructure issues facing Africa, and Nigeria in particular. It has also highlighted opportunities for growth and the many still untapped opportunities for infrastructure investment that will accelerate growth by uniting of the African continent under AfCFTA. Africa has been identified as one of the last frontier markets (Anjarwalla 2018) and as such many investment opportunities are beginning to be realised.

As a latecomer to infrastructure development, Africa can leverage the developments in innovation such as the falling costs of low-carbon technologies. This advantage, coupled with the opportunity to learn from other global regions’ experiences in order to achieve development objectives sooner, could soon create world-class infrastructure and – perhaps – an African renaissance. Nigeria, as the continent’s most populous country boasting the largest GDP, must surely play an integral role in this transformation and has the capacity to become an economic powerhouse.

With the exposure of the global economy to the COVID-19 pandemic, the weaknesses of historic government infrastructure investment (particularly in healthcare) the world over has been exposed. The PPP framework, more than ever, provides a potentially powerful tool for upgrading and expanding infrastructure especially in developing nations such as those in sub-Saharan Africa (including Nigeria). While this paper does identify some pitfalls that will need to be managed, nonetheless PPP models present a significant potentially opportunity to efficiently deliver both healthcare infrastructure and infrastructure across a range of other areas including transportation, energy, and water.    

Tunde Ajia is a programme delivery executive and strategy advisor, providing numerous organisations and governments with advice on strategy for major capital projects, PFI/PPP initiatives, project financing and placement of concessions. He is the founder of Jabiut Development Partners, a UK-based; infrastructure finance and project consulting organisation which is actively involved in major programme delivery.

Tunde holds an MSc in Major Programme Management from the University of Oxford, UK, an MBA from Grenoble Graduate School of Business, France, and an MSc in Project Management from Northumbria University, UK.

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