Nigeria’s leaders causing failure of PPP, says Pat Utomi

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

Utomi spoke on Thursday(July 28) 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.

He challenged the leadership of the nation 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.