By Bimbola Oyesola 08033246177, [email protected]
Several challenges facing Nigeria, including insecurity and unemployment, could be traced to infrastructure decadence and deficit. This is the view of the National Union of Civil Engineering Construction, Furniture and Wood Workers (NUCECFWW).
Immediate past president of the union, Amechi Asugwuni, speaking at the sixth national quadrennial delegates’ conference of the union in Asaba, Delta State, on Thursday, noted that the challenges facing Nigeria were huge and diverse and could be traced to poor living standards, which are caused by infrastructure decadence and deficit.
Asugwuni, reflecting on the theme of the conference, “Sustainable Infrastructural Development: Panacea to Insecurity and Unemployment in Nigeria” noted that the country was endowed with enormous and abundant natural and human resources sufficient to place it among the first 10 developed countries globally.
“Despite the huge endowment, higher percentage of over 180 million population wallows in poverty with the poorest living standards. Unemployment, insecurity and under-development are growing faster as the nation is caught between affluence and affliction,” he said.
Asugwuni, deputy president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said the neglect in the provision of adequate infrastructure framework by successive governments jeopardizes the nation’s development and economic prospects.
He said, “Experts have identified investment in infrastructure development as foundation for sound and safe economy and engender growth and wealth as well as living standards of the citizens.
“Power, transportation, information and communication technology, health and education remain in dismal and national embarrassment. The absence of national agenda on infrastructure that should serve dual advantage in both economic growth and job creation had bred room for high level of insecurity in the country.”
He added that a World Bank report recently stated that over $14.2 billion would be needed annually to fill the country’s infrastructure gaps, while yearly budgetary allocations fall below 40% of the required needs.
The labour leader said that such news was poor and like a glass cut in the hand of a minor, as the world today has taken infrastructure to be a reliable means to wealth generation.
He opined that the ravaging global pandemic (COVID-19), which has claimed many lives, has further exposed infrastructure deficiency and decay in the country, stating that it was evident in major sectors of the economy, especially health, education, transport and ICT, among others.
“Nigeria should take its lesson from already recorded failures, especially in our health sector, transport and ICT to adopt infrastructural framework for national development that would outlive political parties’ manifestos,” he said.
The BWI, the international body, NUCECFWW, is affiliated to in its solidarity message said infrastructure development within the world’s developing countries has not received the will and acceptable attention of consecutive governments, particularly in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
However, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, represented by Acting State Controller of Labour, Mrs. Ozulumba Eucharia, said the Federal Government understood the importance of infrastructure as it forms the backbone of every society providing essential services such as energy, power, water supply, waste management, transportation, telecommunication, etc.
“Dear comrades, permit me to state that the President Muhammadu Buhari government’s drive to sustained infrastructural development across the country and fulfillment of one of the administration cardinal promises is unprecedented,” he said.