Buhari on Infrastructure

Awareness

Buhari’s plan outlines well the importance of infrastructure to the development of the country. It also picks up on the scale and scope – agriculture, power, transport and telecommunications -of the current inadequacy of infrastructure in Nigeria as well as the effect that this is having on the economy. The plan also recognizes the potential for job creation that the building of infrastructure will have. While not in this section but rather as part of the Mission, there is an explicit mention of the need to develop a maintenance culture.

However by lumping all these disparate yet individually important issues into one the General shows a lack of awareness of the scale of these issues. You are not going to be able to solve the problem of transport in the same way that the problem of power generation will be solved.

Ambition

As all these issues are treated together as one it is hard to tell how ambitious the plan is in any particular respect. In addition to which there is no clear policy that one can to point to. What this section does promise is that when infrastructures are undertaken they will be done through a combination of public private partnership (PPP). There is also a policy to implement a strict regulatory framework for these PPPs.

Detail

There is little or no detail as to what will be built, when, where or by whom.  It is however made clear that funding for these projects will be through PPPs.

My View

There is very little to actually go on in this section and in the whole document there is very little beyond rhetoric said about the state of infrastructure. This is particularly surprising from a political standpoint because it is the delivery of new roads, or better GSM signal or constant electricity that will really win voters on the ground, in addition to which the planned privatisation of PHCN is an easy policy to come out in favour or against, yet no mention was made of it. In my opinion the CPC should have treated transport, power and technology as three separate issues because these are the issues that people actually talk about. It is an opportunity missed.

Scores (Out of 5)

Awareness: 2.5

Ambition: 2.5

Details: 1.0

My View: 1.0