Nigeria's leaders causing failure of PPP -Utomi

Renowned economist, Prof. Pat Utomi, says the indiscipline of Nigerian leaders is responsible for the continued failure of the Public-Private-Partnership initiative.

Utomi spoke on Thursday during the 6th Annual Public Lecture of the Lagos State Public Service chapter of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria in Ikeja, Lagos.

Utomi, who spoke on the topic, 'Public Private Partnership: Tool for Economic Growth and Development in Nigeria,' said the trend was that once a particular public office holder got into power, he would either scuttle the PPP project initiated by his predecessor or amend the entire project.

He said concession agreements in the country had been scuttled because of the indiscipline of public office holders, citing the 1983 Lagos metro-line project of the Alhaji Lateef Jakande-led administration, which was scuttled by the military administration of the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari.

Utomi said if the project had been allowed to succeed, it would have changed the landscape of Lagos and the entire nation.

"Concession is where a private concern manages a project for a fee because there are capacity problems in managing it by the government. The tragedy of the common man that what belongs to all belongs to none can be a challenge to the public sector, but Built-Operate-Transfer, where the capital comes from the private sector to build and after some years, transfer to the government is key.

"We need more education of the people to understand these things and good representatives from the government side are needed.

"The political parties have an important role to play. They have failed in their duties to educate Nigerians on policy direction, on basic discipline for achieving sustainable development and these problems of indiscipline are those things that are significantly affecting concession because one government comes and wants to reverse what the other administration has done," he said.

Utomi challenged the nation's leadership to urgently embrace PPP for the interest and development of the country as government alone could not provide the needed resources to meet the demand of the people.

The Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Overseas Affairs and Investment, Prof. Ademola Abass, said since the government did not have enough resources to provide everything for the populace, PPP had become the way out.

Abass said, "Does government have resources to drive PPP? Lagos is branded a mega city. On record, Lagos has the highest rate of rural-urban migration in the world, what it implies is that we need more resources. To respond to this, we need energy, better roads, among others. The Lagos is 70 per cent water and we rely on land transportation, which is not enough. Lagos government alone cannot drive it, we need PPP."

ICAN Chairman, Lagos State chapter, Mrs. Oyeyemi Ayola, said the body decided to organise the lecture on PPP because it had realised that complete reliance on the government to provide everything had been detrimental to the growth and development of the nation.