BY CHRIS OCHAYI, Abuja

THE President of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, NIQS, Mr. Agele Alufohai has said Nigeria will require over $100 billion to enable it fix roads infrastructure and electric power in the next ten years.

Alufohai made the disclosure in his goodwill message at the 2011 Quantity Surveying Assembly and Colloquium with theme “Quantity Surveying and the Anti-Corruption Crusade- Achieving Value for Money in Project Costs in Nigeria” organised by the Quantity Surveyor Registration Board of Nigeria, QSRBN last week in Abuja.

Alufohai, who was irked by the daunting challenges of infrastructure development confronting the nation, said “we have to close our huge infrastructure gap for us to even begin to talk seriously about national transformation. This would involve spending billions on construction projects. Roads and electric power alone require an investment of over $100 billion dollars in the next ten years for us to enjoy decent levels of provision in these sectors. This excludes other critical economic infrastructure such as railways.

“Professional and transparent costing of the diverse components of these huge infrastructure projects is essential so that a far greater proportion of our spending truly goes into procuring more school buildings, more kilometres of roads, more airport tarmacs, more seaports and others”.

He pointed out that national transformation will remain only a dream if “we continue to have a Nigerian price, a derisive term in international construction circles that alludes to the significantly higher prices of Nigerian projects. “We have to commit ourselves to doing things properly for our talk of national transformation to be taken seriously.

Procurement management

We can start achieving prices that promote growth and social equity when our governments entrust cost and procurement management to only the professionals that are trained, qualified and licensed to do it”, NIQS president stated.

According to him, “our yearning for progress and development takes the shape of bricks and mortar, concrete and cement, steel and wood, that is roads, schools, airports, social housing, bridges and so on.

These are social and economic infrastructure which determine how competitive or productive our economy will be, the number of unemployed Nigerians that will get a means of livelihoods and the quality of life of those employed and of those people who depend on how many of them will be able to eat three good meals a day, the quality of healthcare they can afford. So this is not an abstract topic at all.

“I am fully aware that the government is taking the policy commitment to procure infrastructure through private sector partnerships more seriously and that a lot of construction projects will be delivered through PPP mechanism. We fully endorse this policy.

But PPPs perhaps requires even greater engagement of quantity surveyors as cost management is essential to project design; if we are not to give a good policy a bad name through badly structured PPP deals that lead to conflicts or allow operators excessive profits.

“Efficient project and procurement cost management occurs in the broader context of economic policies that promote free enterprise, fair competition and transparent accessing of opportunities. We all know these are often the precise opposite of what happens when government agencies are given enormous powers to allocate highly-desired and valued goods such as land.

“According to a Nigerian saying, if you give even a mad man a hoe, he will plough the goodies in his own direction. I am seizing this opportunity to call on the Minister of Land, Urban and Housing development, the Housing Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives as well as our Mr.President, Jonathan Goodluck to take steps to eradicate encumbrances on free enterprise and productive efficient exchange of goods such as the Land Use Act.

“All over the world, these policies work for officials who hold the giant hoes. Successful nations have transformed by adopting policies that give every man a hoe so that what he ploughs in his own direction largely depends on his skills and diligence.

“The Government also needs to urgently restructure the operations of Federal Government Housing Sector Agencies and make them focus exclusively on aiding the emergence of capable and well structured private construction companies rather than channeling government’s scarce resources on so-called PPPs that procure houses that only the well-off middle classes can afford. “

Result of corruption

In his address of welcome, the President of Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria, Mallam Husaini Dikko, noted that a situation where cost of doing business in Nigeria is very high, as a result of corruption is unacceptable.

Identifying corruption as the biggest culprit militating against Nigeria’s development, Mallam Dikko noted that effect of corruption is debilitating to the fabrics of our social, economic and physical development. He said, “Transparency International, has over the time ranked Nigeria as one of the most corrupt countries in the world according to its corruption perception index.

Wikileaks, the American on-line whistle blower sings to high heavens about Nigeria’s corruption profile. This calls for sober reflection on the part of all Nigerians be they public officials or private individuals and businessmen. The cost of doing business in Nigeria is very high, ostensibly as a result of corruption. This is unacceptable”, he said.