Nigeria: A Nation In Slow Motion

It’s a worsening syndrome. We lack speed and stamina. We celebrate small things. We are losing ambition. We are not bothered by the loss of time.

In 1977, Nigeria hosted the World and African Festival of Arts and Culture, FESTAC 77. Many say it was a wasteful jamboree. Others said it was demonic. But to host that ceremony, we built a brand new city, Festac. Then, we didn’t have computers, but we built over 10,000 housing units in less than two years. The city’s roads were excellently paved, and despite founding the estate on a swamp, the drainages have kept floods out of Festac for 45 years.

Comparatively, 1977 was the stone age. We depended on imported cement. We didn’t have engineers. Yet we took on that giant project which included the magnificent National Arts Theatre complex, and finished it promptly. To achieve the feat of FESTAC 77, we bought 2000 luxury buses and 100 smaller buses. There were no internet and mobile phones, but we seamlessly hosted more than 45,000 guests and thrilled them with effusive hospitality. The fiesta featured over 50 plays, 150 music and dance shows, 80 films, 40 art exhibitions, and 200 poetry art and dance sessions.

At FESTAC 77, we had the audacity to send our guests 800 kilometres to Kaduna for a three-day durbar. The durbar showcased the rich Arewa culture. We didn’t have private airlines. Nigerian Airways was still in its infancy. We moved thousands of guests to Kaduna and moved them back to Lagos for the boat regatta.

In the seventies and eighties, we built four huge oil refineries. We didn’t import fuel. Today, we spend decades doing wretched turnaround repairs that leave our refineries moribund. It’s not the corruption and indolence that irritate, after all Nigerians have become accustomed to fake new roads, abandoned projects and outright dereliction of duty by successive governments. The real problem is the naked celebration of tardiness, which sometimes makes the timely completion of projects politically less rewarding.

Today, we can no longer dream. We have been building a second Niger Bridge for an eternity. It has spanned two election cycles. And whenever the government releases new pictures of that snail-paced project, it beats its chest. It demands and receives fresh accolades. The road network in Festac town would make even a multitude of Second Niger Bridges look like children’s drama. But we finished Festac town in a few months. Forty years on, with computers and mobile phones, that FESTAC 77 project would seem too ambitious for us to engage.

Rome was not built in a day, but how long would it have taken Rome to build the 135 km-long Lagos-Ibadan expressway? Daily, lives and livelihoods break down at traffic snarls on that road. Yet the contractors continue fiddling with the road. The road ought to have been completed years ago, but every day, new pictures of the same road are published, and folks shower freshly minted praises on the government. A project that can be completed in less than two years has lingered for eight years, but nobody reads tardiness as a failure. Most major road repairs around the country are lingering. When did bridges and roads become impossible to build in Nigeria? How do we now sit on them and never finish them? How did we construct the third mainland bridge?

I must commend the Lagos state govt for thinking up the intracity rails. Rivers state is preoccupied with small things. But some of the stations Lagos built in 2015 are now decaying. How long should it take to build that rail line that links Mile two to Marina, a distance of no more than 17 kilometres? It’s easy to blame it on funds. But it has to be about priority and planning. Why take on a project and not fund it responsibly? Why build delicate train stations and leave them unused for rodents for seven years? When projects drag for too long, the process becomes utterly inefficient: the cost rises, and the job  depreciates.

Agreed, our budgets are miserable, like watery soups. We borrow to fund capital expenditures. We depend on the mercy of the Chinese and other creditors to finish capital projects. That might have stunted our ambitions. So why can’t we rethink the financial engineering of these major infrastructural projects? When Lagos handed the Ozumba Mbadiwe to Ajah Expressway to private investors, many murmured. But imagine that axis today without that road and its solidity. Wouldn’t Lagos be a better place if it allowed other investors to fund the coastal Barbeach to Epe?

But why would governments bother to think if the citizenry can be hoodwinked into worshipping tardiness and mediocrity? Projects have timelines. These times and costs must always be published. And they must form the basis of the public evaluation of any project besides job quality. If the public puts the government under pressure to deliver timely projects, the government would be forced to deregulate and embrace the private sector.