Let’s get this concession right

By Muhammad Danjuma Abubakar

The federal government, in a document released recently by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, announced its decision to concession 12 federal highways to private sector investors.

It stated that the decision was to ensure “regular maintenance of road networks across the country.

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A good road infrastructure is a unit of the broader term ‘infrastructure,’ which include water and sanitation, health care, housing, electricity, information and  communications technology, seaports, airports and so on, that are precursors to inclusive and sustainable development.

Indeed, our efforts towards holistic development are linked to good road infrastructure as it enables people to access essential services. Given this reality, the government at all levels has allocated billions of naira for the construction or rehabilitation of roads, including the creation of specialised agencies, such as the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency-FERMA (by the federal government), yet the state of roads in Nigeria today does not match these resources spent over the years. Rather, these roads are characterised by potholes and craters. Commuters are forced to contend with dust and avoidable accidents, largely due to bad roads.

It is in my view that federal government’s decision to transfer the maintenance of 12 highways and operation to private investors under what it termed “Value Added Concession” agreement is wise because road maintenance is a capital-intensive business and government has no business to run business, except to play facilitative roles for private sector players to run businesses and generate employment.

We must understand that the robustness and resilience of our economy is intractably tied to sound private sector participation and a good way to stamp out public sector corruption.

It, however,   deserves emphasis that the federal government must ensure that the allocation of these highways to interested bidders is transparent. It should also try as much as it could to shut out “briefcase” private investors. The not-so-good system that characterised the power sector privatisation with so much loose-end still etches in the memory of Nigerians.

More so, the government must be thorough and ensure that the contractual terms embedded in this proposed concession do not box ordinary citizens at the end and not rope the government herself.

In view of the foregoing, the federal government and relevant agencies, such as the Infrastructure and Regulatory Commission (ICRC) must exhibit assiduousness in monitoring and time to time directives to the would-be concessionaires.

In conclusion, all relevant stakeholders like labour, the media, civil society organisations, National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), among others should be carried along and citizens well informed on the benefits derivable from this decision.

Muhammad Danjuma Abubakar can be reached via [email protected]