Social Infrastructure Development in Nigeria: The Roles of Public and Private Sectors

Abstract

This paper discussed some of the contemporary issues on social infrastructure in relation to the roles of the public and private sectors in infrastructure deliveries in Nigeria. it explained the effort being put in place directly and indirectly to achieve one of the three aims of the millennium development goals (MDGs) which call for improvement in infrastructure deliveries by 2015 in order to conform with international ethos where multi-national exploit the gains of decentralization, privatization, and sustainability of public infrastructure to the disadvantage of developing countries. It further pointed out that the financial responsibility undertaken by the Nigerian government to execute social infrastructure could be lessen if the private sectors are encouraged to participate in the infrastructure development. In order to achieve this, it was suggested that appropriate policy should be instituted at federal, state and local government level which could be assessed on four criteria (I) access to the infrastructure services (ii) quality of the infrastructure services, (iii) affordability of the infrastructure services (iv) financial sustainability of infrastructure services. The Nigerian governments political and logistic supports will be necessary to shore-up the efforts of the emerging private sector participation.