NIGERIA is littered with thousands of abandoned projects. Indeed, available data indicate that if these abandoned projects were completed, Nigeria would have been one of the most infrastructurally developed countries in Africa.

Research unveiled in July 2023 claimed that there have been over 56,000 abandoned projects in Nigeria since our independence in 1960. According to Senator Godswill Akpabio, who was the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs during a botched House of Representatives probe of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, in September 2021, over 13,000 of these stump projects existed in the coastal zone of the Niger Delta alone.

Project abandonment is a pastime for most Nigerian leaders. One of the few positive things that could be said about Muhammadu Buhari’s regime is that he continued many elite projects he inherited from his predecessors. These included the revival of the railway network, the continuation of some federal trunk roads, and completion of the Second Niger Bridge.

The ugly incidence of project abandonment is a national malaise. For instance, in Rivers State, former Governor Nyesom Wike abandoned the monorail and Greater Port Harcourt projects of his predecessor and former boss, Chibuike Amaechi. To date, a train remains suspended on a concrete skyline. 

The completion of this project would have given Nigeria’s premier oil city a great facelift and eased off the perennial traffic snarls. The main cause of that abandonment has been attributed to political differences.

This unhealthy situation also exists in Lagos State. Despite the touted development plan laid down by the Governor Bola Tinubu administration between 1999 and 2007, his successors did not always follow through on the plan. 

Governor Babatunde Fashola started the Blue Line metro rail project, but his successor, Akinwunmi Ambode, abandoned it and embarked on his own ambitious projects.

In the same vein, Ambode’s successor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, while reviving Fashola’s rail projects, neglected Ambode’s world-class transport interchanges, especially the Oshodi facility, which changed the outlook of a district renowned for crimes, crowds and decrepitude. Today, the interchange has fallen into disrepair and is unable to serve the purpose for which billions of the state’s taxpayers’ money were expended.

Apart from inter-regime political malice and differences, corruption is a major driver of project abandonment. Every new leader wants to award his own contracts and initiate his own “pet” projects to recoup the money spent buying votes. It is a great disservice to the people’s welfare.

We will never develop if we continue like this. Completion and maintenance are vital aspects of good governance. They are the keys to service delivery and should be prioritised by all well-meaning leaders.

The Federal and State legislatures owe it to themselves to call previous leaders to account for the money spent on abandoned projects. Without sanctions and deterrence, evil thrives.