The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has attributed lack of economic growth in Nigeria to neglect of key infrastructure by previous governments.
Fashola said this in Lagos on Friday at an interactive session on President Muhammadu Buhari’s scorecard on Power, Works and Housing.
He said the nation was living on the infrastructure built 30 years ago, and that the neglect had caused a setback to the country’s economic growth.
He, however, said the government was doing everything possible to revive infrastructure and build new ones.
Fashola said even though there had been neglect for a long time, there had been improvement in power generation, road and bridge construction and the pilot scheme of National Housing Programme.
“We need to understand that Nigeria is living largely on infrastructure she built 30 years ago. Look at the airport, it was designed for about 200,000 passengers and at the time it was the best in West Africa, if not many parts of Africa but no expansion took place. Now it is processing eight million passengers.
“If you look at the Apapa Port, it was the first in Nigeria, but there was no port expansion until 1970s. For almost 70 years, our economy grew, our population grew but we did not expand our port. For the record, Singapore is undertaking its sixth port expansion and anticipating what will happen in 2030,” said the minister.