SBL CONFAB: Panel Explores Ways of Closing Nigeria’s Infrastructure Gap with PPP

Across the African continent, critical stakeholders have leveraged on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to bolster budgetary shortfalls in key sectors such as infrastructure, energy, mining, and telecommunications, etc. PPPs are increasingly being seen as a veritable tool in actualizing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in emerging economies. However, concerns remain when it comes to accountability, transparency, and the debt burden associated with PPPs, and the need to have reliable policies and regulatory frameworks that address these concerns in a bit to make PPPs more resilient. As potent as PPPs are in our quest for development as a country and a continent, experts agree that they need to be used carefully and responsibly.

How to do this was the question on the minds of the sterling cast of panelists who sat to discuss the issue at the 17th SBL Confab in Lagos. Moderated by Jobalo Ogunkanlu , Executive Director at ARM-Haring Investment Ltd., the panel, according to NEWSWIRE Law and Events Magazine’s correspondent in Lagos, also featured Dapo Oduwole , the director-general of the Ogun State PPP Agency; his Nassarawa State counterpart in the person of Ibrahim Abdullahi, CEO of that state’s Investment Development Agency; Diekola Onaolapo , Managing Director & Founder of Excellion Capital; Opiuyo Oforiokuma , Senior Partner at the Africa 50 Infrastructure Acceleration Fund; and Tobenna Erojikwe , Partner at The Law Crest LLP.

In the course of a highly insightful engagement, the panelists agreed on the urgent imperative of halting the dearth of infrastructure in our country by leveraging on what Oforiokuma referred to as ‘bankable capital’, but also to balance that need with the following:

• the human element of development. The silent ‘P’ in the PPP equation, as Abdullahi reminded the assembled conferees, is ‘People’.
• the need to balance regulation (which would ensure accountability and transparency, as mentioned earlier) with the creation of an enabling environment;
• the need to balance the hunger for infrastructural development with the challenge of climate change and its impact on the natural ecosystem and human communities. Oforiokuma noted that Africa could be a global leader in this regard – especially as it has contributed so little to the problem of climate change relative to the more industrialized economies. If we follow the rules (even if the West which originates those rules hardly does) while pursuing sustainable development goals, Africa could be a torchbearer for a more responsible global developmental paradigm;
• the need for the federal government of Nigeria, along with corporate and intergovernmental organizations, to be more robust and intentional in their engagement with states and other subnational stakeholders – considering the fact that the bulk of PPP projects actually reside within the purview of state governments.

The future of development, as Ogun State’s Oduwole put it, is in PPP. Stakeholders will, therefore, do well to plan and structure its ecosystem more strategically, and in a more efficient and timely manner.