On Nigeria’s 11,886 abandoned projects, by Mohammed Salihu

According to public chronologies, the present unfortunate abandoned project crisis in Nigeria was hatched during the period of 1973–1983, specifically the oil boom era, when the country had to embark on infrastructural development winging ungainly, which led to poor project management. And the aftershocks are still very much with us. The success rate for project delivery started to decline over the years, and since then we never made up the lost ground. At date, circa N7.5 trillion projects are presently in jeopardy from poor project management and related bottlenecks. This is the combined value of the 11,886 abandoned projects reported by the President Jonathan committee of 2014 and those of the Abuja Mega projects recently revealed by the media. Obviously, this is weakening the economy and also causing massive loss of employment opportunities across the country. The prevailing situation doesn’t portray us as serious people and country, because if we cannot organize to manage projects successfully, then how can we expect to manage a country in this 21st century and beyond? Our growing record of project failure is a very sad development and worrying as well. This is because in today’s fast-paced business world, project management is a necessity, not a luxury, as more than one-fifth of the world’s economic activities are now being organized as projects, with an annual value of about $15 trillion dollars. Thus, one can only imagine how high the stakes are across the globe. Project management has become increasingly essential for development and one of the new ventures for growth. It is true that while almost every project may face some technical, cultural, legal, and economic issues during their life cycles, however, they can be diagnosed as well; so the stakeholders know the problems, review the plans and return the project on track, rather than left to fail or become abandoned. Also, we must know for a fact that the purpose of the officials, consultants and other specialists assigned to these projects; who usually embark on expensive trips, attend project meetings and who incurred humongous project expenses; are for the success of the projects and overall interest of the public. We cannot continue to be eluded by project success everywhere in the country; this is irresponsible and unacceptable. Our present circumstances and this year’s revelation of the abandoned Abuja mega projects should make us try to do something to end project failures. A longtime project management professor of mine once told me in a passing comment that project failure, without a doubt, is one of the worst pieces of legacy a government and generation can leave behind them. Nigeria, as a developing nation, must embark on ambitious reengineering of the process and people used for project management and leave the legal issues of project failures from contract defaults or breach of trust to lawyers and experts who know the terms of the contracts to handle them. We must focus more on what should be our major concern as citizens and stakeholders of our own projects; the project management processes i.e. the conception, planning, coordination, and construction of infrastructure and their disturbing outcomes so far. And here’s the mystery, striking to those of us of a certain age – that is, old enough to have already been studying or doing project management in the past two decades, government had processes, project managers, engineers, consultants, project offices, other project infrastructures etc., that is expected to exist, yet for some abnormal reasons, there is no clear consensus about what, if any, lessons we should draw from years of terrible project management outcomes. So why don’t the project teams raise the red flag when project failures start manifesting? The answers to this question were mixed reactions, but across the country many can only think of it as conspiracies to divert public funds using the projects as the conduits, sad but true. It is time to end this irresponsible practice of avoidable project failures; Project Management isn’t any rocket science! Our universities and other research centers, should as a matter of both urgency and obligation develop a method for a project management practice that ensures dynamism of project success in the country. The existing project management culture seems to have no impact; it is also very wasteful and breeding corruption. Project management is not only about fancy titles, expensive trips, branded vehicles, allowances, meetings, employment; it is ultimately for the deliverables and the products. Public projects are usually undertaken to address urgent public needs, as such citizens should always take interest in how they are managed and delivered. The government must be very clear on the directions for managing projects. It takes the cooperation of all stakeholders to bring a project to a successful completion; this requires defining the vision, planning the tasks, organizing the project team, capital budgeting, scheduling and overseeing the work to the finish line religiously. And, maybe, I should ask this: why didn’t any branch of the government consider it worth taking up the responsibility to address the issue of the reported abandoned projects in the past weeks? During President Jonathan’s reign, when the issue came up, he set up a committee promptly, we expect nothing less from this government, but more. Anyway, as far as I can tell, the political leadership in Nigeria always plays politics with projects; as patronages for loyalists – it is political survival at the public expense! In conclusion, we must collectively as a nation all go to bat to be able to achieve outstanding project successes for our own good, if we cannot, then we must blame ourselves on it, as project management has been around for thousands of years and was used in the construction of the Ancient Wonders of the World, so we cannot blame it for on our woos, but our poor application of it.