Nigeria Needs $2.3 Trillion To Bridge Infrastructure Gap, Says Osinbajo

• Nigerian Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said that Nigeria would require at least $2.3 trillion over the next 30 years to bridge the infrastructure gap.
• Osinbajo cited statistics from Nigerian Integrated Infrastructure Masterplan (NIIMP) and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020 to buttress his point

Nigerian Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said that Nigeria would require at least $2.3 trillion over the next 30 years to bridge the infrastructure gap.

The vice-president made this statement on Thursday at the opening of a two-day retreat of the National Council on Privatization (NCP) that would deliberate the proposed amendment of the Public Enterprises (Privatization & Commercialization) Act 1999.

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The Vice President, however, said that the only way to “effectively” address the massive infrastructural deficit that the country faced “is by Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement in one form or the other”.

Osinbajo, who cited statistics from Nigerian Integrated Infrastructure Masterplan (NIIMP) and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020 to buttress his point, said: “the review of budgetary allocation for capital expenditure even over the past decade will show that government resources are completely insufficient for this purpose.”

According to him, “There is a large pool of investable funds from both local and international investors for the development and maintenance of infrastructure. But these are only accessible where there is a business case to be made for developing public infrastructure.

“So, for both institutional and individual investors, there is far more comfort with lending or with equity participation where a private sector entity partners with a public authority owner of the infrastructure.

“This way, the public partner can play its natural role of a regulator (regulation and policy), leaving the business to the private sector.

“So, for investors, PPP presents the best of both worlds,” Prof. Osinbajo added .

The Vice President stressed the need to develop a framework that will be attractive to investors.

 

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