Community involvement in the implementation of the national policy on public-private partnership: a study of infrastructural development in Lagos State, Nigeria.
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Date
2020
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Abstract
Undoubtedly, public-private partnership (PPP) has emerged as a policy tool for infrastructural
financing, optimisation and maintenance through an appropriate policy framework. The policy
framework of PPP is expected to promote collaborative governance through democratic values in the
partnership agenda. These ideals have positively impacted on design and implementation of PPP
policy in the developed nations. Ironically, a series of resentments, public outbursts, complaints and
agitation that followed the implementation of the National Policy on PPP in Nigeria heightened the
need for this study. These unwholesome developments usually arise from the host communities over
claims to certain rights or due to their exclusion in certain critical decisions connected to the PPP
projects implementation agenda. Using Lagos State, Nigeria as a case study, the researcher draws
substantially from the themes of collaborative governance theories among others to examine how the
National Policy on PPP in Nigeria aligns with the state’s policy to accommodate the host
communities in the infrastructural policy implementation framework (PPP-IPIF).
The multi-theoretical approach adopted is premised on the researchers’ pragmatic philosophical
orientation to evaluate theories or beliefs in line with practical applications. Hence, data were
sourced, presented and analysed using different statistical tools. Conclusions were drawn based on
the combined strength of both qualitative and qualitative data using a triangulation/nested method.
The major finding of the study suggests that the existing PPP implementation framework has not
effectively incorporated the host communities by creating an institutionalised function for them.
Therefore, their involvement or non-involvement in project implementation was left to the discretions
of private project handlers. The study also established that, beyond compensation, the host
communities desired to take an active part in the PPP policy implementation framework. Before this
study, our knowledge of PPP infrastructural project governance was sketchy. It is against this
background that this study employs the theoretical viewpoints of collaborative governance and
participation theories, to advance the knowledge of host community stakeholding in PPP
implementation. The study analyses the framework upon which the projects were established and the
extent to which participatory values were institutionalised in the collaborative arrangement. The
study concluded that PPP is a collaborative governance model whose implementation is still at the
experimental stage in Nigeria; the researcher, therefore, develops a workable model as part of the
recommendation based on the study’s experiential findings.
Description
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.