The House of Representatives is about to embark on a seemingly quixotic venture of recovering about 12,000 abandoned federal building projects scattered throughout the federation, particularly Abuja and Lagos which have served as our Federal Capitals.
In May 2024, the Senate had kicked off the effort with a six-member committee led by Senator Lola Ashiru. Its job was to “look into 11,856 mega projects abandoned by the Federal Government”. And now, its House of Representatives pair, sequel to a motion raised by Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda, averred that the probe was necessary to avert further wastage of public resources and ensure the recovery of crucial national assets.
The Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, NIQS, had, in 2021, disclosed that these 11,856 abandoned projects represented 63 per cent of projects embarked upon since our independence in 1960, meaning that the Federal Government has only 37 per cent projects completion rate.
This latest effort being made by the Green Chamber seems just another lame attempt to confront this problem. Way back in 2000, President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Presidential Implementation Committee on Federal Properties. The Committee “died” with the expiry of the Obasanjo regime. Also, in 2011, former President Goodluck Jonathan empanelled a similar presidential committee, which visited the 36 states of the Federation and Abuja. Nothing has been heard of its achievement in this direction.
Some of the federal projects identified as abandoned include: The Federal Secretariat Complex, Ikoyi, Lagos; the Nigerian International Hotel building, Suleja, Niger State; Federal Inland Revenue Service building Umuahia, Abia State; Kaduna Textile building, Kaduna; Nigerian Aluminium Smelting Company in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom State; National Library Headquarters, Abuja; the Millenium Towers, Abuja, among others.
The question playing on the mind of Nigerians is: have the panels on these abandoned projects become another “job for the boys”? After two presidential panels, the Executive Branch failed to salvage the abandoned properties. Is it now the turn of the National Assembly to burn public funds with nothing to show for it? After wasting public resources on abandoned projects, are we to continue wasting scarce resources on abandoned efforts to salvage them?
Many of these were well-intentioned projects aimed at actualising the industrialisation programmes of successive regimes. But due to sudden changes of regimes and government policies, economic downturns, corruption and incompetent governance, these projects were left to litter the landscape.
We need a combined panel of experts working together with government appointees to conduct a comprehensive probe of these projects, at least for public accountability. The law must take its course wherever cases of corruption is identified. The government should also consider selling off or privatising the white elephants through competitive bidding, or activate the public/private partnership model to actualise some of them.
Let’s stop running around in circles.
The post Salvaging our N20trn abandoned properties appeared first on Vanguard News.