Nigeria needs $3tn to bridge infrastructure gap —Osinbajo

The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, on Thursday, said Nigeria requires about $3tn over the next 30 years to bridge the infrastructure gap across the country.

In his address at a webinar organised by the Bureau for Public Enterprises on deepening the Nigerian infrastructure stock through Public-Private Partnership, Osinbajo said it would be difficult for the government to provide the humongous sum.

He noted that the $3tn was arrived at based on findings contained in the Nigerian Integrated Infrastructure Masterplan and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.

He said, “Nigeria needs up to $3tn over the next 30 years to bridge the infrastructure gap. The Federal Government would have to spend the entire revised 2020 appropriation of N10.81tn continuously for the next 108 years or more on capital expenditure to meet that target.

“The fact that only N2.49tn was appropriated for capital expenditure in 2020 reflects the importance of deliberate and pragmatic action to boost infrastructural spending.”

The Vice President said adopting new models of investments for infrastructural development was now an imperative as reliance on public expenditure alone was no longer sufficient or capable of meeting the $3tn needed to bridge the infrastructural deficit.

He said, “It seems to me to be quite clear that the financial outlay and management capability required for infrastructural development and service delivery outstrip the financial and technical resources available to the government.

“In other words, the traditional method of building infrastructure through budgetary allocations is inadequate and set to become harder because of increasingly limited fiscal space.”

He said the deficit could only be made up by private investment, as the country’s private sector was 92 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, while the public sector was a mere eight per cent.

“So, the synergy between the public and private sector through Public Private Partnerships is really the realistic solution,” Osinbajo stated.

On his part, the Director-General, BPE, Alex Okoh, said government would have to leverage private sector capital in a variety of ways in order to bridge the infrastructure gap in Nigeria.