Nigeria’s road projects and the economics of excess

Nigeria is on an unsustainable fiscal path. Amidst rising debt obligations, ballooning governance costs, and mounting socioeconomic pressures, the Federal Government appears committed to road construction projects whose cost per kilometre now far exceeds regional and global benchmarks, without offering adequate justification to the Nigerian public.

Recent revelations from the Ministry of Works show that a 258-kilometre road project in Kebbi State was awarded at ₦958 billion for just one lane, pushing the cost to nearly ₦4 billion per kilometre. Minister David Umahi, who disclosed this, added that the second lane is pending Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval; one that will eventually push the investment on that corridor alone to nearly ₦2 trillion.

In Sokoto State, another 120-kilometre road has been procured at ₦454 billion for a single lane. In total, the infrastructure commitment in the Kebbi–Sokoto axis could exceed ₦3 trillion, a figure equivalent to nearly a quarter of Nigeria’s entire capital budget for 2024.

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These numbers are not just staggering; they are alarming. At a time when over 60 percent of Nigeria’s revenue is dedicated to servicing debt, with minimal fiscal room for essential sectors like healthcare and education, the rationale behind these capital-intensive road projects requires more than political rhetoric. It demands economic logic and public accountability.

Comparative data makes the picture even more concerning. While Nigeria now spends an average of $2.3 million per kilometre of road, countries like Egypt spend $1.6 million, Kenya between $300,000 and $1 million, and South Africa as low as $200,000 per kilometre. The entire 10,228-kilometre Cairo–Cape Town highway, which stretches across ten African countries and varied terrain, was budgeted at just $156,000/km.

If Nigeria, with ample local construction firms and abundant raw materials, is building roads at a cost more than seven times higher than many of its peers, then we are not just losing money; we are bleeding value.

The Federal Government’s flagship Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, projected to cost ₦15 trillion, illustrates the scale of the disconnect. At ₦4 billion per kilometre, this road is expected to cost more than the combined 2024 budgets of Nigeria’s 36 states. No amount of economic optimism can justify this level of expenditure in a fragile fiscal environment.

While the Ministry of Works has attributed some of these costs to terrain, inflation, and exchange rate volatility, the absence of publicly available cost breakdowns, independent audits, and transparent procurement processes raises significant red flags. At present, neither the Bureau of Public Procurement nor the National Assembly offers Nigerians any clarity on how road projects are priced, prioritised, or monitored.

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It is precisely this opacity that gives credence to long-standing concerns around inflated contracts, patronage politics, and institutional inefficiencies in Nigeria’s infrastructure development. According to a World Bank benchmark, the standard cost of constructing a kilometre of paved road should not exceed ₦238 million. The Anti-Corruption Network has flagged that many federal contracts exceed this by a factor of ten.

Furthermore, the cost of maintaining a kilometre of road in Nigeria, estimated between ₦400 million and ₦1 billion by the Centre for Social Justice, is another cause for concern. When the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure far outstrips both utility and sustainability, it becomes evident that the problem is not technical capacity but financial mismanagement.

“We believe that infrastructure must remain a pillar of Nigeria’s development agenda, but that requires a hard reset in how projects are conceived, costed, awarded, and tracked.”

The implications are far-reaching. Every naira spent inefficiently on overpriced road contracts is a naira unavailable for job creation, broadband infrastructure, education reform, or support for struggling small businesses. These are the sectors that drive inclusive growth and economic resilience, not construction projects that neither deliver value nor stimulate productivity in proportion to their cost.

We believe that infrastructure must remain a pillar of Nigeria’s development agenda, but that requires a hard reset in how projects are conceived, costed, awarded, and tracked. We call on the National Assembly to initiate an urgent public inquiry into the pricing of all ongoing federal road projects. This inquiry must be data-led and involve independent engineers, procurement experts, civil society organisations, and anti-corruption bodies.

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Furthermore, the federal government should adopt transparent cost benchmarking, anchored on regional and global best practices, to guide all future capital projects. No road contract should be awarded without a published cost-benefit analysis and a project delivery timeline subject to citizen oversight.

Infrastructure is not a bad investment. But when it becomes a conduit for elite rent-seeking and fiscal indiscipline, it ceases to be developed. If Nigeria is serious about reversing economic decline, it must begin by demanding value for money in the very places where value is most often lost.