The Federal Government has approved Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects valued at $9 billion over the last 11 years.
A statement from the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) issued in Abuja yesterday quoted the Commission’s Director General Mr. Micheal Ohiani as saying that “between 2010 and 2021 through ICRC’s regulatory oversight, the Federal Government had approved PPP projects worth about $9billion.
Ohiani added that the Commission has “midwifed many laudable projects which will go a long way to bridge the infrastructure gap in Nigeria,1 including the Lekki Deep Sea Port which was at 98.07 per cent completion”.
Others are “the Nigerian Air project which will fly before the end of the administration, as well as upgrade of four major international in Nigeria, among others”.
The ICRC has also offered to assist state governments take on viable infrastructure projects using PPP.
Director-General, ICRC, Michael Ohiani, made these known when he received a delegation of Media Trust Group, owners of Daily Trust, led by its Group Chief Executive Office, Mounir Gwarzo.
Ohiani told the delegation that some states were taking on PPP projects through the assistance of the ICRC.
Noting that the Act of the Commission only confers on its regulatory functions for Federal Government projects, the ICRC, he said, has set up a peer review mechanism to assist states.
This, he said, is to ensure that “their PPP projects are in line with best practices through the establishment of the Nigerian Public Private Partnership Network (NPPPN) in collaboration with the Nigerian Governors Forum”.
Ohiani added: “There were also some projects that were on the exclusive legislative list, for example Deep Seaports, Rails, Airports among others that if a state government wants to go into such investment opportunities, they will have to follow ICRC’s guidelines and regulations.”