Lai Mohammed, Babalakin, others Pinpoint PPP Headaches in Nigeria

Segun Atanda/

Major problems militating against private investment in Nigeria were identified at the Quarter Three edition of Aviation Round Table (ART) Breakfast Meeting in Lagos yesterday.

Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, the Chairman, Resort Group, Dr. Wale Babalakin (SAN), and others heaped the blame on inadequate education among government officials about the issues involved in Public-Private Partnership (PPP), lack of legal framework, inconsistent government policies and failure to honour agreements validly entered into.

According to them, until these problems are resolved, there would always be dearth of the expected direct investments, both locally and internationally, which are needed to bring the country’s economy out of the current recession.

Delivering a lecture as the Guest Speaker on “Investment Opportunities in Airport Development for Economic Growth”, at the event, Babalakin lamented that the attitude of government officials had continued to scare away private investors.

He added that a situation where various past governments, especially the military with their civilian collaborators, destroyed all sectors of the economy with inconsistent policies was what Nigerians were paying for.

He added that “a weak educational system with melancholic decadence of great intellect is affecting the aviation sector and all other sectors of the economy”.

Babalakin regretted that since he started investing in aviation sector over one decade ago, 11 ministers had presided over the affairs of the sector with different policies, “which if subjected to critical analysis leads to nothing”.

He argued that a government that does not honour its own agreement cannot be taken seriously by investors.

He noted that at the negotiation stage with an investor, the government must put its best intellectuals forward to do the negotiation “instead of making the investor, who has the agreement, look like the devil because PPP projects require 75 per cent of thinking and 25 per cent in implementation”.

While citing the bitter experience of one of his companies, Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL), operators of the first privately-funded airport terminal in Nigeria, MMA2, Babalakin said in an attempt to give the country the best design that can stand the test of time, “the company went round the world and came out with what is today the best-managed airport terminal in Nigeria, where a total blackout had never been recorded in the last 10 years of its operations”.

Muhammed, who was the Guest of Honour on the occasion, agreed with Babalakin that there was the need for a legal framework in PPP policy, counselling that government officials also needed to change their approach to agreements validly entered into with any private investor, irrespective of his or her ethnic background or religion, in order to attract the required private investments for the economy.

While describing MMA2 as a proof of what the private investors can do, the minister said, “if MMA2 is an error, it is a good error and I want that kind of error replicated all over Nigeria”.

Others who spoke in similar vein on the occasion are: the Managing Director/CEO, Air Peace, Chief Allen Onyema and Executive Director, Lagos and South-West, UBA Plc, Mr. Ayoku Liadi.

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