Abstract

It is common knowledge that Nigeria’s road infrastructure, and indeed the general infrastructure of sub-Saharan Africa, is in a most despicable condition. This paper formalises this observation by providing current data to support the hypothesis. By deploying descriptive and theoretical methodological approaches, it demonstrates that road infrastructure is not only deteriorating but also suffers from a twin evil of deficit and deprioritisation in the public sector’s preferential scale–a state of indifference of sorts. Long and short term policy choices have to be made to urgently address the issue. In the short term, infrastructure concessions, public private partnerships (PPP), pension funds, sovereign wealth fund, savings from reduction in fuel subsidies, leveraging on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) mechanism–are part of the portfolio of choices that government can readily choose from. In the long term however, the paper recommends increase in the statutory allocation to the states and local governments which would ensure that component units of the federation control more resources to deploy and develop infrastructure in their immediate domain.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.