A study of failure and abandonment of public sector-driven civil engineering projects in Nigeria: An empirical review

Abstract

Incessant failure and abandonment of public sector projects are still posing serious concern and challenges to the society and other stakeholders in civil engineering and construction industries. The study identifies and examines the salient factors and the warning signals responsible for failure and abandonment of public sector driven civil engineering projects with a view of directing efforts towards forestalling the problems. Opinion survey was adopted with area and judgmental sampling procedures. Primary data based on the identified factors, was captured with the instrument of questionnaire from professionals in civil engineering projects operating in the South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The analytical tools used in the study were severity index, spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, relative agreement factors and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (W.). The rankings of different professionals were significantly correlated. The result of percentage relative agreement factors indicates that the most salient factors causing failure and abandonment of public sector driven civil engineering projects in order of significance are frequent changes in government and political power, unreliable mode of financing and payment of completed work, and project contract sum indirectly used to compensate political big-wigs etc. Wtest further substantiates the results by indicating significant degree of concordance in opinion of experts. The study therefore concludes that politicallyinduced corruption, undefined and non compliance to the agreed mode of financing and payment of completed work are the bane of project success. It is therefore a matter of legislation and policy formulation which should be instituted to avert failure and abandonment of public sector-driven civil engineering projects.