Nigeria’s Infrastructure, Growth, and the Chaos Model By Olatunji Ariyomo

I’m Engr. Olatunji Ariyomo, FNSE, and it’s a privilege to be your guest speaker today at the 2024 Alumni Homecoming of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA).

First, I want to express my sincere appreciation to the leadership of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department for organizing this homecoming event and for inviting me to speak. My heartfelt thanks also go to the Department, the School of Engineering and Engineering Technology, other schools, and the past and present management of FUTA. This includes the teams led by Professor Peter Adeniyi, Professor Bisi Balogun, the late Professor Biyi Daramola, and our current Vice Chancellor, the first female to hold the position, Professor Adenike Oladiji.

These remarkable individuals have worked tirelessly over the past 15 years, transforming FUTA from just another institution into Nigeria’s best university of technology. It’s now an outstanding citadel of learning that consistently ranks among the top 3 best universities nationwide in global rankings. Our alma mater has truly morphed from the “Federal University of Tension and Agony” into the “Federal University of Tenacity and Accolades.” We are incredibly proud of your achievements.

When I was first approached about this lecture, the organizers suggested the topic: “Building Sustainable Future: Green Infrastructure and Economic Resilience in Civil Engineering.” I thought about it and asked myself, “Won’t we build infrastructure first before we even go green?” So, I decided to use what we call “Speaker’s License” to tweak the topic to: “Nigeria’s Infrastructure, Growth, and the Chaos Model.” The “chaos” part was deliberate – to grab your attention.

I believe occasions like this are crucial for sparking debates. Our ultimate goal is to reach a consensus that can reshape or lead to a re-evaluation of Nigeria’s current infrastructure ambitions and delivery strategies.

The Engineering Practice

I understand this is a multi-disciplinary gathering, so it’s important to explain some core concepts and terms that will feature prominently in this lecture, especially for those who aren’t engineers.

The term engineering comes from the Latin ingenium, meaning “cleverness,” and ingeniare, meaning “to contrive, devise” (IAENG, 2016). It’s a professional practice where knowledge of mathematical and natural sciences, gained through study, experience, and practice, is applied with judgment to economically utilize the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of humankind (Freyberg, 2006).

So, engineering has:

1. An identity as a professional practice.
2. A distinctive process (knowledge of mathematics and natural sciences).
3. An objective (to build economically for the benefit of mankind).

Engineering sub-disciplines are diverse and include civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic, metallurgical, material, agricultural, petroleum, computer, financial, cost, industrial, biomedical, and systems engineering, among others (IAENG, 2016).

From this, it’s clear that the engineering profession is responsible for building infrastructure for humanity’s benefit. In other words, infrastructure, particularly physical infrastructure, is a product of engineering.

What is Infrastructure?

The concept of infrastructure covers physical, social, and even virtual assets, depending on the context. Infrastructure is “both relational and ecological…being the balance of action, tools, and the built environment” (Star, 1999). We’ve also seen the word “infrastructure” vaguely stretched to include things like food or political handouts, as seen with the notorious example of “stomach infrastructure” in Nigeria.

Basically, infrastructure refers to “the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function” (Sullivan & Sheffrin, 2003). The World Bank considers infrastructure sectors to include “energy, information and communications; mining, transportation, urban development, water supply and sanitation” (World Bank, 2001).

The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language (AHDEL) defines infrastructure in two key ways:

An underlying base or foundation, especially for an organization or system.

The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for a community or society to function, such as transportation and communications systems, water and power lines, and public institutions including schools, post offices, and prisons (AHDEL, 2010).

On July 15, 1996, President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 13010 defined infrastructure as: “the framework of interdependent networks and systems comprising identifiable industries, institutions (including people and procedures), and distribution capabilities that provide a reliable flow of products and services essential to the defense and economic security of the United States, the smooth functioning of government at all levels, and society as a whole” (Moteff & Parfomak, October 1, 2004).

From these definitions, it’s clear that infrastructure doesn’t have to be solely physical. Of course, for our discussion today, our focus is on physical infrastructure. The US presidential definition, however, is consistent with a national security viewpoint, especially given how Section 1016(e) of the USA PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts, in response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, defined critical infrastructure as systems and assets—whether physical or virtual.

The AHDEL explains that the term has been used since 1927 (supported by Oxford English Dictionary, 2019) to collectively refer to “roads, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works that are required for an industrial economy, or a portion of it, to function.” It notes that “perhaps because of the word’s technical sound, people now use infrastructure to refer to any substructure or underlying system,” including an extended use to cover people, e.g., “that terrorist organizations have an infrastructure of people sympathetic to their cause.” However, the AHDEL’s “Usage Panel finds this extended use referring to people to be problematic” (AHDEL, 2010).

Given the now limitless applications of the word “infrastructure,” within the context of our discussion, we’ll be limiting ourselves to physical assets required for a society to function as our acceptable definition of infrastructure.

Notable Historical Public Infrastructure

One of the earliest public infrastructures built by man was the Appian Way (or “Via Appia”), constructed in 312 BC in Rome during a war with the Semnites, a central Italian tribe. The Semnites were twice as populous and had a land area twice the size of medieval Rome (Hyde, 2017). Yet, the Romans defeated them primarily because Rome had the Appian Way. That road provided two strategic advantages by allowing troops and supplies to easily reach battlefields.

Similarly, the first passenger-carrying public railway in the United Kingdom was opened by the Swansea and Mumbles Railway at Oystermouth in 1807, using horse-drawn carriages on an existing tramline. Advancement in steam technology later led to the commencement of the first locomotive-hauled public railway in the world over a 40km long route on September 27, 1825, in the UK. In 1869, Queen Victoria commissioned two railway coaches, built at Wolverton Works by the London and North Western Railway and designed by Richard Bore.

1. The railway would later provide four strategic advantages to the United Kingdom:
2. It became a central solution to the nation’s transportation challenges, sometimes representing more than 20% of all passenger journeys in Europe (NR Press Release, 2010).
3. It evolved into a major employer, with the rail industry employing 115,000 people and supporting another 250,000 through its supply chain (Oxford Economics, 2018).
4. It emerged as a key source of revenue for the United Kingdom.
5. Construction technical know-how became a significant source of foreign exchange earnings for the UK.

The British Government began building its first rail line in China in 1865 and started one in Nigeria (Lagos-Abeokuta-Ibadan) in March 1896. The first rail line in Nigeria took them just 2 years to complete. By 1905, China had started building its railways by itself. As of 2024, Nigeria heavily relies on China for the construction of its rail infrastructure.

Diane K. Drummond (University of Leeds) examined British investments in overseas railway systems and found that by 1914, British capital investment in railways globally was 40.68% of Britain’s total capital investment overseas, which equaled £3,763.3 million that year. The annual interest paid on British Investment in Railways overseas from 1905 to 1906 was £83 million (Paish, 1909).

Comparatively, the discovery of oil in Dubai in 1966 triggered its present development. Regardless of the economic implications of the oil booms, Dubai’s ruler at the time, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum (1958-1990), began aggressive investment in functional infrastructure, recognizing that oil was a finite resource and that one day Dubai would run out of it (Dubai Online, 2019). As a result, he began to build an economy that would outlast oil. His focus? Functional infrastructure.

By 2018, according to Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, international overnight visitors spent a total of $30.82 billion in Dubai, a 3.8% increase over 2017 ($29.70 billion). This makes Dubai the city that brings in the most tourist dollars worldwide, with Mecca coming second at $20.09 billion. On average, a visitor spends $553 per day in Dubai (DDT, 2019). Yet, Dubai attracted more tourists than ever before in 2023, welcoming 17.15 million international overnight visitors (Mediaoffice.ae, 2024).

It’s important to note that oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Nigeria in 1956 by Shell-BP, ten years before Dubai. As with the rest of the UAE, about 95% of Dubai’s GDP is not oil-based. As of 2018, crude oil accounted for less than one percent of Dubai’s GDP (Edmond, 2019), while tourism accounts for as much as 20% (Dubai.com, 2018). “The relentless commitment to infrastructure development turned Dubai into the Mideast hub for finance, information technology, real estate, shipping, and even flowers” (Winkler, 2018). The guiding philosophy behind Dubai’s infrastructure development is the deliberate application of a moderate amount of crude oil reserves to generate infrastructure for education, healthcare, manufacturing, trade, and tourism, to build a world-class economy that attracts commerce, tourists, and people seeking a better life.

A Common Factor

From medieval Rome to Victorian-era Britain to modern Dubai, a common theme underlies their spectacular development successes: a deliberate effort to grow specific infrastructure to gain a specific development advantage. Iconic legacy infrastructure projects and adequate physical assets were developed for education, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, trade, and tourism to build each of these economies into a global destination of choice. Once effective, their infrastructures became critical assets central to service delivery, employment generation, revenue generation, and in many instances, as “exports” yielding foreign exchange earnings through sales of expertise (as Britain did in the 1800s and as China is currently doing in many African countries) or “tourist dollars.”

It’s correct to assert that for these development role models, deliberately growing their stock of infrastructure is a mandatory prerequisite to economic competitiveness or sustained and sustainable development.

Chaotic Development

Many of us have probably asked, “Why can’t Nigeria be like the United Kingdom?” or “Why can’t we be like the UAE, like Dubai?” Why is it that even though Britain built the first railways in both China and Nigeria, Nigeria is wholly dependent on China for its critical railway assets over a hundred years later?

The answer stares us in the face, even if we refuse to acknowledge it. Nigeria is the eponymous “egbinrin ote” – a complex web of schism and divisiveness. Our country presents a unique case of convoluted identity conflicts that make cooperation towards a united, altruistic goal difficult, though not impossible.

I’ve studied countries that transitioned from crisis to stunning success, such as Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Germany after the ruins of World War II. Or those that were fledgling nations 40 years ago, like Singapore, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. They all experienced linear growth based on their elite consensus to develop and a focus on infrastructure development as a primary or fundamental strategy toward economic competitiveness. None of them, however, harbored or accentuated their fatal differences as a definitive state policy, as Nigeria has done.

In a conflicted scenario like this, a good way to understand Nigeria’s stifling underdevelopment is through the concept of chaos in science and engineering. While this may appear foreboding, it nonetheless offers hope.

As part of their training, the average engineering student encounters the concept of entropy. This is a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. Entropy is often interpreted as the degree of disorderliness or randomness within a given system. Chaos theory, on the other hand, simply states that a system where no randomness is involved in generating future states can still be unpredictable. Essentially, the basic tenet of chaos theory that relates to entropy is the idea that the system inclines or leans towards “disorder” (Truong-Son, 2016), meaning it’s unpredictable. Overall, chaos theory deals with things that are impossible or very difficult to control and predict.

Our colleagues in computer engineering or science are familiar with the “chaos model.” In computing, the chaos model is a structure of software development. It was noted that project management models, while sufficient for managing schedules and staff, don’t provide methods to address ancillary issues like computer bugs or other technical concerns. At the same time, programming methodologies, while effective at fixing bugs and solving technical problems, don’t help in managing deadlines or responding to customer requests. Sometimes, I see a nexus between this dilemma and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics, regarding the precise simultaneous measurement of an object’s position and velocity. The objective of the chaos model, therefore, is to attempt to generate structures that will bridge this gap (ACM SIGSOFT, 1995).

In effect, the chaos model’s relationship to chaos theory is the idea that big issues cannot be stabilized or fixed without also stabilizing or fixing the smaller issues. Ladies and gentlemen, can you see where I’m going with this?

There are very important small issues that have simply made forging an elite consensus around the growth and development of Nigeria difficult. They are also the root cause of the nation’s economic uncertainties over the past six decades. Issues of ethnicities, religion, and socio-political conflicts continue to undermine Nigeria’s potential for greatness.

The stipulation from the Chaos Model, within the context of this lecture, is that we must address those fundamental and foundational issues in their relatively small or seemingly insignificant form for us to fix the wider or broader issues with Nigeria and thereafter become globally competitive. The seemingly smaller issues are fatal distractions easily leveraged by unpatriotic and unscrupulous elements as cover to perpetrate and perpetuate their selfish agenda in the guise of fronting for the collective.

Furthermore, remember I implied that while the entire scenario of the Nigerian Underdevelopment Dilemma presents as a candidate for some form of chaos modeling and therefore foreboding, it nonetheless offers hope. This is because I have concluded that chaos is, in fact, natural. Order, on the other hand, though desirable, is unnatural – and has to be earned.

Overall, in modeling Nigeria’s development dilemma, the biggest albatrosses to her focus are the underlying small problems of tribe, religion, and the system or method of governance. What the chaos model suggests in the Nigeria scenario is that these issues must be stabilized, fixed, or addressed for the bigger issue of development to take place. The holy book pointedly asks: “Can two walk together unless they agree?” (Amos 3:3).

Our Potential

Nigeria is the epicenter of Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy. With a population of over 228 million (UNPD, 2024), Nigeria’s GDP was $472.62 billion in 2022 and has averaged $125 billion from 1960 until 2018 (Trading Economics, 2024). Nigeria has one of the largest crude oil and natural gas reserves in Africa, with significant deposits of other largely untapped minerals. The nation has an 853 km long coastline, 344,000 square km of arable land, and a strong age mix that supports innovation and entrepreneurship.

Despite her great potential, Nigeria as a collective has failed to efficiently apply moderate resources to build a critical stock of infrastructure or generate the infrastructure for education, healthcare, manufacturing, trade, and tourism, to build up Nigeria or Nigeria’s economy. There is a common theme being violated by Nigeria – the disregard for a deliberate growth of infrastructure stock as a mandatory prerequisite to sustained and sustainable development. These common themes permeated the development examples I earlier listed.

On the contrary, Nigeria appears to have forged an entrenched habit of recklessly applying her resources to service frivolous, bogus, and often superficial needs that constitute no asset either immediately or in the future. The paradox is astonishing when annual budget rituals reveal humongous expenditures on inanities as priority expenditures from limited resources, while the nation goes cap in hand to beg for loans purportedly to service critical infrastructure.

From her independence in 1960 till date, Nigeria has experienced at least 3 major oil booms, whose proceeds should have triggered the type of deliberate and structured development required to bring order to her chaos. Healthcare facilities in many parts of Nigeria remain a nightmare. Transportation and traffic experiences remain frightening. Spatial planning is often absent, with market vendors taking over sidewalks of limited roads to ply their wares. Many pupils learn on bare floors in several public schools. Our public facilities are often an eyesore – with the saddest examples being our international airports, where the convenience and toilet facilities would often make you shake your head in disgust and wonder what is going on in the minds of our visitors! The walls and floors are often unattended for years. Facility maintenance simply doesn’t exist in our thought ecosystem.

Hope

Remember that our definition of engineering concluded with the words: “…for the benefit of mankind.” Remember too that we have established that infrastructure is essentially a product of engineering. Recall also that we have confirmed that Nigeria has found it difficult to convert her unique natural advantages and human resource endowments into economic and social benefits for the country and the majority of her citizens, and that this has fatally denied her the evolution of such assets that can drive a competitive economy.

Order is the antithesis of chaos. Addressing public infrastructure deficits is a methodical way of creating or simulating order or restoring order. Fixing infrastructure is, in fact, the quickest way for Nigeria to attain social equity. This is because the average public infrastructure represents the common platform of goods and services capable of equitably addressing the communal needs of the people regardless of status.

You may have observed that I haven’t dwelled upon the need to craft development plans or visions. Don’t get me wrong. Visions are necessary for generating plans that can make infrastructure development a success. But visions are useless to a man perpetually in slumber. We crafted Vision 2020 several years ago. Before that, there was Vision 2000. At the time we unveiled Vision 2020, it seemed so far away. Then we crossed our legs, tilted our caps over our faces, folded our hands, and went to sleep. Similarly, the year 2020 came in, and quietly passed. The words of John C. Maxwell hold true: “Vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.”

As earlier stated, however, the biggest albatross to Nigeria’s ability to mirror the successes of the likes of the UK, Dubai, etc., are the underlying unattended small problems of tribe, religion, and the system or method of governance that best serves the people. From the chaos model, it will be nearly impossible to fix the bigger challenges of infrastructural development and economic prosperity without stabilizing these other small issues. What the chaos model suggests in the Nigeria scenario is that these issues must be stabilized, fixed, or addressed for the bigger issue of development to take place.

Recommendations and Conclusion

To move forward, we must:

Structurally fix the seemingly smaller issues and remove the “oil” that is fueling discord and the growing activities of non-state actors across the geo-political zones. This will enable the formation of elite consensus across ethnic, religious, and socio-political divides.

Evolve a model of leadership that creates room for the brightest and most capable among the people to rise into strategic leadership positions. In the UK, for instance, from kindergarten to university, systems are in place that identify talents and covertly nurture them. This is why within a single classroom in the average British school, there are actually about six disparate classes. Only parents who pay attention would know.

Concurrently, develop a master plan for all cities, towns, and villages in Nigeria, and let everywhere in the country become a giant construction site for the provision of needed infrastructure for education, health, food security, physical security, transportation, communication, etc.

However, we must not build just for building’s sake. No. Rather, we must build to be competitive. We must build with the additional intent of having such assets rank among the best globally in terms of quality, durability, efficiency, safety, aesthetics, and cost-effectiveness.

Each asset, whether national or local, must then be supported with a maintenance plan. We can even decide to empower organizations like the EFCC and its equivalent at the state or local councils to go after not only thieves who stole money, but also officials who allow national and local assets to go to waste from lack of maintenance, thereby causing losses with even greater negative impact than what is directly being stolen.

What do we need to get all these done? We need the political will from leaders who appreciate the vision and are enamored of the future of our people. We need the technical know-how that must be deliberately acquired as part of strategic national and local development plans. We need a lot of money to be created by capable minds who know how to get that done.

Ladies and gentlemen, the only limit to our development is our imagination. This is because development will evolve only in the direction of our imagination. Thus, beyond mere wishful thinking and rhetoric of good plans or intentions, Nigeria must in practical terms begin the serious job of economic delivery of 21st-century infrastructure across all sectors. This must be the sole focus of our budgets. This must be deliberate. This must be compulsory.

THANK YOU.

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