In the long arc of Nigeria’s development story, few themes recur as persistently—and as problematically—as infrastructure. Broken roads, dysfunctional ports, stalled railways, and bottlenecked urban sprawl have long defined a nation rich in potential but hamstrung by logistics. Yet under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, now two years into office, Nigeria may be witnessing one of the most ambitious infrastructure build-outs since independence. The scale is vast, the ambition staggering, and the stakes impossibly high.
“The government must not only build but also maintain and institutionalise delivery systems that outlast individual administrations.”
By the second anniversary of his presidency, over 440 road projects are underway across the country. Among them are headline grabbers: the 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and the 1,058-kilometre Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway. These aren’t just political trophies—they represent a structural reimagining of Nigeria’s transport grid. The logic is simple but profound: reduce the cost and time of moving goods and people, and you unlock productivity and trade. But infrastructure is never just about concrete and asphalt; it is about national cohesion, economic competitiveness, and the kind of long-term thinking that defies political cycles.
Beyond roads, Nigeria is making bold moves in rail. The long-abandoned Port Harcourt–Aba rail line has resumed commercial operations, a rare moment of continuity in Nigeria’s frequently erratic rail sector. The Abuja Light Rail system, once derided as a white elephant, has also returned to life, providing urban mobility to the capital’s residents. Meanwhile, the Benin–Asaba Superhighway and the Calabar–Abuja express corridor are being designed to connect commercial cities with inland hubs, opening up interior markets that have long remained underutilised.
All of this is being coordinated under a central platform—the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund (RHIDF). Unlike past attempts, which were often fragmented and underfunded, RHIDF seeks to harmonise funding, project monitoring, and implementation under one programmatic structure. The hope is to avoid the usual pitfalls: contractor abandonment, bureaucratic delays, and cost overruns.
Yet financing remains a massive hurdle. Nigeria’s 2025 federal budget of ₦54.99 trillion—its largest ever—allocates significant capital to infrastructure, but debt servicing still consumes a large share of government revenue. Multilateral support, such as the recent $1 billion facility from Afreximbank, and private sector co-financing models like the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for the 125 km Benin–Asaba road, are critical. Still, large-scale infrastructure in Nigeria has rarely escaped the gravity of debt or the politics of rent-seeking.
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For now, the government appears willing to endure short-term fiscal stress in exchange for long-term gains. That calculus may prove wise. According to logistics industry estimates, the average cost of road transport in Nigeria is nearly double the continental average. Reducing that cost, even marginally, could unlock billions in economic value across agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce. The 42,000 metric tonnes of grain released this year to counter food inflation would move far more efficiently—and spoil less frequently—if roads connecting Nigeria’s food belts to urban centres were dependable.
Infrastructure also acts as a signalling tool. It is an outward sign to investors that a government is serious about business facilitation. In 2024 alone, over $50 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) commitments were recorded, much of it linked to logistics, energy, and extractive infrastructure. When companies make billion-dollar decisions on where to locate factories or process minerals, roads, rails, and ports are not perks—they are prerequisites.
Critics argue that focusing heavily on new builds while neglecting maintenance of existing infrastructure is a recipe for repeating past mistakes. They also question the transparency of procurement processes and the risk of politicisation, especially with the 2027 elections on the horizon. These are valid concerns. The government must not only build but also maintain and institutionalise delivery systems that outlast individual administrations.
Interestingly, the geography of infrastructure under Tinubu reflects a growing awareness of national equity. In the past, major capital projects clustered in a few regions. Today, infrastructure projects span all six geopolitical zones, from the 421 km Akwanga–Jos–Bauchi–Gombe corridor to the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway. The aim seems clear: rewire the country not just for efficiency but for unity.
This vision of an integrated Nigeria—where a trader in Aba can move goods to Kano without days of delay, or a tech hub in Akure can reliably connect to the Lagos port—is not romantic optimism. It is economic realism. No country has industrialised without infrastructure. No digital economy can thrive without physical connectivity. And no population of 220 million people can be adequately served by a crumbling, congested logistics grid.
The task ahead is to institutionalise this momentum. The RHIDF must become more than a slogan. Project tracking, data-driven auditing, and independent performance evaluations must follow. Local capacity must be built, not just imported through foreign contractors. Finally, transparency and citizen engagement must underpin all this. Roads and rails built without accountability may move trucks and trains, but they will never carry trust.
As Nigeria steps deeper into its third year under Tinubu, the infrastructure question is no longer whether the country can afford to build. The real question is whether it can afford not to.
Dr. Oluyemi Adeosun, Chief Economist, BusinessDay Media
