Continuity

Normalising the adoption and completion of inherited projects

Continuity is a vital part of governance. No Government can do everything that needs to be done, even in two full terms. There will be stuff inherited and stuff to be handed over, unfinished. It is the very nature of government. (I’m certain it applies just as much in the private sector).

Yet, there is a strong disincentive to continuity in government, that is especially pronounced in these parts. It’s perhaps the fallout of the yet-to-mature status of our politics, marked as it is by a deep-rooted impulse for the personalization of projects.

Everyone wants to start and finish their own stuff, and have their name on it. It’s as if folks do not want to invest in projects for which they might have to share the credit with someone else. It’s very common at sub-national level. Nigeria is littered with projects abandoned because they were started by, or strongly associated with, a predecessor. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s the same political party or not.

I like to say that President Buhari of APC did a better job of continuing with and completing the PDP projects he inherited, than President Yar’Adua of PDP did with the PDP projects he inherited. The Yar’Adua years were marked by a strong desire to repudiate the Obasanjo legacy, even though Yar’Adua was handpicked for the Presidency by Obasanjo.

Yar’Adua suspended Obasanjo’s US$8 billion railway modernization contract with China, reversed the sale of refineries, reversed the last-minute (slight) increase in petrol price, and terminated a bunch of agreements with an Indian company for Nigeria’s sprawling steel assets (which led to litigation that dragged for 15 years and ended up costing Nigeria a tidy sum of money in arbitration settlement).

In 2015, when President Buhari assumed office, in the first transfer of power in Nigerian history from a ruling party to an opposition party, anyone would have been forgiven for assuming—from the vigorous tenor of the partisan campaigning—that it would be a total repudiation of everything by way of policy or project associated with the PDP.

Normalizing Continuity

But that did not happen. Even while excoriating PDP, the APC government that succeeded them understood the importance of continuity. So, Buhari is what you’d call a ‘systems’ / ‘due-process’ person, and he worked methodically to revive and restore stalled projects.

He ultimately succeeded in normalizing the concept of continuity, peeling away the stigma associated with it. One of his first big moves was a Presidential Order expanding the Treasury Single Account (TSA) system, which had first been developed a couple of years earlier, but was still mostly in ‘pilot’ territory.

(I must make it clear that the Buhari Administration, in addition to the focus on continuity, was also big on doing its own new stuff. So it wasn’t focused exclusively on inherited stuff. Just to point that out).

Second Niger Bridge: The Jonathan Administration had finally kicked off “Early Works” on the bridge, and said it had spent a little money—which came to less than 10 percent of the final project cost—before it left office. Buhari completed it. But even along the way there were those who resisted giving him the credit for putting in the financing and the work.

A lot of noise was made and lies told, about this project, to give the impression that the credit really belonged to the previous administration, and not the administration that paid for and did over 90 percent of the work. And that brought home to me what I highlighted earlier: the strong disincentive against touching inherited projects. It’s as though a lot of politicians just ask, why bother, when I can do my own thing without any controversies regarding credit.

The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, which had defied three PDP administrations, became a financing priority for Buhari, and the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) was set up, under the management of the National Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Speaking of the NSIA, it was established by the Jonathan Administration in 2011/2012, and given a billion dollars of seed funding. That was about it. Under Buhari, the NSIA became a centerpiece in the implementation of economic policy, especially in the areas of Infrastructure and Agriculture.

In addition to managing the PIDF, it was also given the responsibility to drive the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI)—a Government-to-Government Agreement between Morocco and Nigeria—which took the number of Fertilizer Blending Plants in Nigeria from seven in 2016 to more than 70 in 2022.

The NSIA also launched a healthcare infrastructure program under President Buhari, that saw them investing in a world-class Cancer Treatment Center in Lagos and Diagnostics Centers in Kano and Umuahia. NSIA under Buhari enjoyed way more visibility and responsibility than it did under Jonathan who established it.

One of the first big projects that the Buhari Administration completed and commissioned was the Abuja-Kaduna Standard Gauge Railway Line, which had been started and almost completed by the Jonathan Administration. Buhari also picked up the stalled three-decade-old Itakpe-Warri Standard Gauge Rail, and completed it in 2020.

Another quickly-completed project was the 287km Ikot-Ekpene—Alaoji—Ugwuaji Transmission Line, which had been held up, in the words of the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, by “property rights challenges, legal and community challenges, and the invocation of fetish practices to frustrate contractors along the right-of-way.” These issues had stalled completion for about two years, and it look a lot of community negotiation and engagement by Fashola’s Ministry, including an out-of-court settlement, to resolve the issues.

Several other inherited power projects were eventually completed, including Zungeru Hydropower (700MW), Kashimbila Hydropower (40MW), Dadin Kowa Hydropower (40MW).

Compilation of the National Social Register (NSR) had started under the Jonathan Administration, in about eight States, with the technical support of the World Bank. The Buhari Administration took it over and expanded it to all 36 States and the FCT, covering more than 15 million Poor and Vulnerable Households, and more than 61 million individuals, by the end of the administration.

I recall the Minister of Water Resources always saying that his priority (and the President’s priority) was the completion of inherited projects, as opposed to starting new ones. And that he inherited more than 100 abandoned or unfinished projects, in the areas of Water Supply, Dams, Hydropower, and Irrigation. (If I recall correctly, the first inherited Water Supply project to be completed by the Ministry happened to be in former President Jonathan’s community in Bayelsa State).

I recall also that in 2017, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, launched YouWin Connect, as a new Phase of the original YouWin, which was a signature Jonathan Administration program.

Abuja is different

Maybe it’s different at sub-national level, perhaps it’s easier to start and finish the typical subnational project, between elections. No doubt State Government projects are typically smaller-scale than Federal projects, so maybe Governors have the liberty (certainly not the moral justification) to jettison projects and policies associated with their predecessors and launch their own signature stuff. Maybe.

In Abuja it’s different. The Federal Government is a behemoth, in all ramifications. Any President or Minister serious about succeeding really has no choice but to pick up, in many areas, from where their predecessor left off.

Public procurement in the Federal system is also more complicated than in States, where Governors can spend money as they wish—yes, that’s how ‘flexible’ sub-national public expenditure systems can be. We’ve heard of States where Governors issue spending approvals via WhatsApp. That’s impossible to pull off in Abuja. Abuja loves its paper trails and formal approvals, so that even when the system has to be abused or exploited, this has to be done with a paper trail.

These complexities of the Federal government mean that considerable time can go into getting a brand new project off the ground. If you want to make quick(er) impact, ongoing projects should be a definite priority.

In Part 2, I’ll write about the ways in which the new Administration of President Tinubu has carried on with the continuity that President Buhari established as the ideal way to run Government; and also about how external parties sometimes play a role in guaranteeing continuity.