Public private partnership policy in Nigeria's infrastructure development landscape : a critical appraisal of the infrastructure Concession Regulatory Act

Abstract

Nigeria is rich country in terms of natural resources, It has one of Africa's largest economy, having being endowed with massive natural, human, renewable and non-renewable resources. With a population of about 160 million people which creates a large market for goods and services, rich soil suitable for commercial agriculture, deposits of natural resources including crude-oil, natural-gas, tin, and rock-salt, and cash crops including cocoa, kola-nut, cotton, groundnut and timber, Nigeria has the potential of being one of the largest economy globally and the political hegemony in Africa.1 However, the country has not been able to achieve sustainable development as a result of the deplorable state of infrastructure. Nigeria is confronted with the problem of immense infrastructure deficit which adversely affect national income, cost of production and distribution of goods and services, reduces Foreign Direct Investment(FDI), and result in poverty, unemployment, frequent youth unrest and fall in the general living standards.2 The poor state of infrastructure assets in the country is traceable primarily to the neglect by government and poor maintenance during the transition period from military rule to civilian administration. In an attempt to recover from the infrastructure decay, privatization was commenced in the late 90s through to the 21st century. Yet, there was no commendable improvements as the quality of public services dropped continuously and most of the enterprises were eventually wounded up as a result of corruption, poor maintenance and lack of skilled expertise.3 Furthermore, as a result of budget deficit caused by contraction in fiscal space, and continuous increase in demand for public services which correlates with population growth and rural-urban migration, public financing cannot facilitate bridging of the infrastructure gap. Also, having realized the success of Public Private Partnership (PPP) in other climes, government adopted PPP in 2005 to aid transition of the state of national infrastructure through private involvement in infrastructure financing. Unfortunately, for well over one decade of adopting PPP, Nigeria has not witnessed any commendable changes in her infrastructure assets. The poor performance of PPP in country has been traced to several factors including corruption, lack of transparency, and undue political interference. Central to the factors is the problem of regulatory deficit.4 Consequently, this study will examine the Nigerian PPP legal and regulatory framework to ascertain the problems responsible for the inability of the infrastructure financing technique to facilitate sustainable development through successful infrastructure projects.