Dr Jobson Ewalefoh, the Director-General, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), says Public Private Partnership (PPP) can solve the infrastructure challenges being experienced in the power sector.
ICRC acting Head, Media and Publicity, Mr Ifeanyi Nwoko, communicated this in a statement on Sunday in Abuja.
Ewalefoh was a member of high-level panelists at the just concluded event organised to mark the 30th anniversary of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) with the theme “Accelerating Infrastructure Development.’’
Responding to questions on the infrastructure gaps in the power sector in spite of various strategies to fix it, Ewalefoh said that PPP was the best option to build new power infrastructure and also optimise existing ones.
“We have a lot of infrastructure gaps in Nigeria today across all the sectors from transportation, energy, health, housing and other sectors.
“It is no longer news that the revenue of government cannot take us to where we want to be in terms of infrastructure; we have tried a lot of options, and we have to recalibrate our strategies now.
“The only way we can bridge the infrastructure gaps that we are having in this country is to harness private sector finance and expertise in building and managing infrastructure.
“We also need to have a shift from the mindset that the government can provide the entire infrastructure that we need as citizens.
“We need to get the funding and the service delivery from the private sector; this will assist the government in building infrastructure.
“The private sector is not only for building new infrastructure, we also need to optimise already existing infrastructure and we need the private sector to play a role.
“The ICRC has a bouquet of options as to how the private sector can come in; not only to build but to maintain and optimise for better service delivery.”
The director-general said that the commission had come a long way and had learnt a lot from the more than 100 concession projects that it had been involved with; it has streamlined its processes and optimised them based on lessons learnt.
Ewalefoh said that the commission was better positioned to handle any infrastructure project; ensure value for money and the Nigerian people.
He said that the current administration had demonstrated that it was poised to bridge the infrastructure gap in the country.
According to him, the commission is setting the right framework that will ensure projects are delivered faster.
Ewalefoh said that the commission was also working to free the PPP space of portfolio investors who neither had the capacity nor the funds to actualise the project for which they had prepared a very beautiful business case.
“Going forward, for any consortium that is vying for a PPP project, we must first ascertain that you have the capacity to carry out such project; not those that seek for funding after obtaining the agreement,” he said. (NAN)
