By Naomi Uzor

Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has said that the  private sector in Nigeria is too weak to provide the huge financial resources required to finance the infrastructure in the country.

Speaking at the third quarterly press conference, the President of LCCI, Otunba Femi Deru stated that the Nigeria private sector is too weak to provide the magnitude of resources needed to finance the deficit in infrastructures, adding that though foreign investors may have the resources to help provide such resources, but their response time may not suit the emergency situation in the country’s state of infrastructure

He said “they will bring a purely commercial perspective to their investments. Infrastructure investments, the developmental content and considerations should loom larger than the quest for financial profitability.  This is why the government needs to play a lead role.

We therefore want to caution against the creation of a crisis of expectation for private sector in infrastructure provision.  The model that has worked so well for the telecoms sector may not present a similar outcome in other infrastructures such as electricity, roads and railways.  The profiles of risks and returns vary widely from sector to sector.” he said

According to him there is an urgent need of governments at all levels in the country to drastically cut down on recurrent spending and the associated wastage and focus on infrastructure spending, saying that the truth is that there are more resources in the public sector than in the Nigerian private sector.

“Let me emphasize again that infrastructures should not be managed by bureaucrats if there must be delivery of value to the citizens of this country from the massive public funds committed to infrastructures.  The issue here is not about the people, but about the systems, processes and values in a typical bureaucracy.  The structure of a classic bureaucracy cannot guarantee the kind of results we expect from public sector infrastructure spending” he stated.

On the issue of domestic debt, Deru said, domestic debt stock grew from N898billion in 2000 to N3.8trillion in 2010, which is over 300 per cent increase in the domestic debt stock.  Yet there is no visible investment in infrastructure to justify this huge borrowing, adding, that  we should not be borrowing to run a huge political governance structure and overhead, which appears to be the case currently.

He said the chamber welcomes the inauguration of the National Content Board for the Oil and Gas industry and that the immediate challenge now is to build local capacity in all aspects of the sector to ensure the sustainability of the policy.  The policy should be extended to cover all sectors of the economy.