Thread by @toluogunlesi

I often see people on my TL saying FG is doing all its infrastructure work in the South, and others who insist the North is getting preferential treatment

That’s Nigeria for you in a nutshell. Constantly fueled by a sense of marginalization that is autonomous of reality

#Thread

You will share news that a Port is being developed in the Niger Delta and someone from somewhere will say why isn’t the FG doing the same (ie building a Sea Port) in {insert sea-less Northern State} 😀

If you do communications for the Federal Government (& if you plan to do this anytime in the future),keep this in mind, that you will always have to deal with the people for whom alleging ‘project’ marginalization is a full-time job. It’s a big part of personal identity for many.

One thing I can say is that this particular government strives to be as National as possible in infrastructure deployment. Take the SUKUK bonds for example - every geopolitical zone gets the same amount of money. Sukuk bond money always been split into 6 equal parts.

Look at the #PIDFund projects:

Lagos-Ogun-Oyo (LagIbExp), Anambra-Delta (2NB) and FCT-Kaduna-Kano (AbjKDKanoExp). Deliberate decision for national spread.

But even with this people will still complain. Oh this particular project is not going as fast as the others etc.

Conveniently ignoring some facts: Lagos-IBadan Exp is 130km. Abuja-Kaduna-Kano is almost 3 times that length, at 375km. Which means you can’t really compare directly. 2nd Niger Bridge is only ~12km TOTAL (bridge itself is actually 1.6km). Different projects different conditions.

Every time you share news of a Federal infrastructure project in one part of Nigeria, so many people instantly and automatically wield it as proof of ‘marginalization’ of somewhere else. They overlook what’s being done in their area and fixate on what’s being done elsewhere.

Only a few people try and step back and take a big-picture look, and see the clear patterns of an attempt to spread devpt around. You don’t expect me every time I post a new project, to quickly have to qualify it with news of everything being done everywhere else. Ko possible nau

Meanwhile here’s something I’ve learned from project-watching: we can’t wait for FG to do everything. As @fimiletoks recently pointed out, less than 20% of roads in Nigeria are Federal. Even that 20% is a substantial amount—35,000km — even entire FG budget will not make huge diff

If the entire country is waiting for Federal budget to fix and maintain 35,000km of Federal roads, using unpredictable oil money, we will wait for a minor eternity. That’s the truth. That’s why the focus must be on innovative ways of financing projects, outside of budget cycles.

And that’s why you have to give it to PMB’s government: #PIDFund, Executive Order 7, handing over critical roads to willing States to fix (like Airport Road in Lagos), and the new Highway Development and Management Initiative (HDMI) — unprecedented efforts at road financing.

That’s the only way to break the jinx; to ramp up roadworks to kind of level that can/should make a permanent dent on the National proclivity to allege marginalization. That’s assuming there’s ANYTHING that can be done to PERMANENTLY silence cries of PROJECT marginalization 😀

In case it’s not clear - this thread is about the perceptions of project marginalization. There are other kinds of feelings of marginalization that cannot be addressed in this thread. I’m specifically referring to infra projects here.

There’s no doubt that the private sector has a lot to do, with Govt enablement of course. And when the private sector comes into the convo, things will get even more interesting because they will put their money wherever they wish regardless of geopolitical balancing.

Recall the brouhaha around the Inland Port in Kaduna. People alleging that FG was marginalizing the south etc. Meanwhile the project was wholly PRIVATE (FG gave the license yeah, but also gave several Ports across several States). So private money decided to develop Kaduna.

Even more interesting: it turned out that the promoters of the Kaduna Dry Port development were mainly Yoruba and Igbo people, including my brother @osita_chidoka. And they got enthusiastic support from @GovKaduna. As it should be.

So fact that Kaduna Dry Port is getting traction & others are not is not Buhari’s fault or FG’s fault.

FG’s own is to give licenses. And support with infra, like rail lines, which make all the difference for a Dry Port. But Private money will go where private money chooses to go

Back to the Federal Budget matter. Important to say that there’s still a lot of room to grow budget size - and fund it! That we agree the budget cannot currently fund most of the projects we need to lay a foundation for development does not mean it is irrelevant. Far from it.