Babalola: Infrastructure development should be decentralised

20 November 2009

Nigerian finance minister Remi Babalola has suggested decentralising infrastructure projects.

In his paper entitled Infrastructural Development of Ibandanland, delivered at the 2009 Ibadan Week Conference in Abuja, Mr Babalola noted this could be a way of taking pressure off the federal government.

The minister mentioned "the necessity of looking inwards by states and local governments" to meet certain requirements and encouraged these administrative bodies to be proactive.

Mr Babalola said the need for infrastructure investment was so large and so fragmented - with each region having different priorities - that the federal body was increasingly struggling to deliver.

The Nigerian government has also expressed faith in investment through public-private partnerships as a way of meeting the country's growing infrastructure demands.

This was one of the options proposed by Federal Capital Territory minister Adamu Aliero.

He was recently quoted by Nigerian news source the Daily Champion as saying: "If we don't find an alternative to the sole government funding model, Abuja will remain undeveloped even in a hundred years."

Category: General