Wale Babalakin
The Pro-chancellor and Chairman of Council, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Dr. Wale Babalakin, has mentioned the federal government has no cash to construct infrastructure.
Babalakin mentioned the notion that Nigeria is a rich nation is fake, including that the one resolution to the nation’s infrastructure deficit is for the federal government to create an enabling setting for personal traders to supply the required infrastructure.
This, he mentioned, can be achieved if the federal government begins to respect the rule of legislation, adhere to agreements, obey courtroom orders and supply incentives for personal traders.
The lawyer spoke in Lagos on the weekend throughout the 2018 Construction Summit organized by the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, UNILAG. The summit, themed: “Smart Infrastructure for Sustainable Competitiveness”, was chaired by Babalakin.
He famous that out of the Federal Government’s N9 trillion funds for 2018, N2.2t goes to debt servicing. He mentioned of the remaining N6.8t, about N2.7t was allotted to capital expenditure.
Explaining additional, Babalakin mentioned: “If you go by final yr’s efficiency, whole capital launched was N1.5t. The remaining cash went into present expenditure, statutory reserves and different miscellaneous funds. So the cash the Federal Government can spend on creating the entire nation is N1.5t. This signifies that N1.5T has to accommodate the intense spending on defence, well being and schooling, amongst others.
“For Instance, UNILAG has over 40,000 college students. As said by the National Universities’ Commission (NUC), the price of correctly coaching one undergraduate in a absolutely accredited course is $three,000. Using a conservative alternate fee of N300 to $1, that's about N1m per scholar.
“This implies that UNILAG alone needs N40b to train 40,000 students per annum. If you multiply this figure by the 40 federal universities in Nigeria, we will be talking of N1.6t. This means that federal universities alone require more than the figure spent last year on capital expenditure.”
Stating that we should learn to maximise our modest assets, Babalakin mentioned the best asset of a nation is its cerebral capability, including that we should promote these with monumental mind.
He mentioned it was regrettable that the federal government’s failure to abide by the rule of legislation has slowed down growth and scared away many non-public traders. Sharing his private expertise on the concessioning of Murtala Muhammed Airport 2 (MMA2), which was constructed and is being managed by one in all his firms, Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL), the lawyer mentioned 11 years after the concession settlement was signed, a authorities company has continued to violate the phrases of the settlement by operating a parallel home aviation terminal in competitors with MMA2.
Babalakin mentioned it was unhappy that the federal government failed to stick to the rule of legislation regardless of varied courtroom judgments and the award of N132b as damages towards it in 2009.
Explaining his travails additional, he mentioned: “Instead of placing strain on the federal government to honour the contract settlement, the banks began harassing us to pay their cash. In the primary 6 quarters, we have been repaying N1.8b per quarter to the banks and we have been producing N300m.