The Federal Government has made  known its intention to unveil a National Integrated Master Plan in the near future. It will be a combined effort among the Ministry of National Planning, the Ministry of Trade and Investment and the moribund Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Agency (ICRC).

According to the National Planning Minister, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman and his colleague of the Trade and Investment Ministry, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, the Plan is aimed at evolving a single plan of action for the rapid development of infrastructure, ensuring that duplications between state and federal governments which in the past led to stalling of projects are avoided forthwith.

Usman says the newly-set up Central Working Group (CWG) led by Mr. Moses Akpobasa to draw up the Master Plan is aimed at plugging it into the effort towards realising the Vision 20-20 agenda.

More importantly, it will help investors to choose where they want to put their money in a new strategy where the private sector is about to take up a leading role in the infrastructural development of Nigeria.

This Plan is significant in the history of this country. It is the boldest indication yet that the Federal Government is progressively reducing its involvement in the establishment of capital projects around the country, which in the past it found difficult to maintain after spending huge sums to build.

It is open to debate whether this is desirable, but for us the most important thing is that attempts are being made once again to have some kind of national development plan, this time specifying infrastructure.

Perhaps nowhere else in the country is the chaos occasioned by lack of shared vision and responsibilities in infrastructural development more telling than Lagos, the focal theatre of the Nigerian economy. Most of the roads being reconstructed and rehabilitated in Lagos belong to the state government. Most federal roads are left to rot.

The irony is that Apapa, where majority of the facilities belong to the Federal Government, are in desperately deplorable conditions, and yet this is the zone that accounts for the chunk of Nigeria’s non-oil revenues.

We fault the intention of the FG to nominate commissioners from geo-political zones to play roles in the CWG.

Rather, we recommend that state governments should be fully involved in the evolvement of the Plan to ensure that duties, responsibilities and benefits of the Plan will be acceptable to both the FG and states. Let it be a partnership, rather than master-servant relationship.

If everybody – federal, state governments and investors – come on board on terms that are mutually beneficial, the possibility of success will be much higher.

We commend this effort to introduce an integrated strategy to overcome our infrastructure deficits. We hope it will be implemented.