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Fact-Check 87 | When Concrete Exists but Services Do Not
The Comfort of Construction
Infrastructure is the most photogenic form of governance. Roads can be pointed at. Buildings can be toured. Contracts can be announced. In political communication, infrastructure has become shorthand for progress itself, a visible proxy for competence, investment, and development.
In Imo State, infrastructure occupies a central place in official narratives. Public statements routinely reference roads built, facilities commissioned, and capital projects executed. The implication is clear: construction equals access; access equals improvement.
But infrastructure economics draws a sharp distinction between existence and function. A road that does not connect people to markets is not infrastructure; it is concrete. A power line without electricity is not access; it is wiring. A health facility without staff, water, or electricity is not care; it is architecture.
This fact-check examines not whether projects exist, but whether people can use them.
How Infrastructure Is Actually Measured
Development agencies do not evaluate infrastructure by ribbon-cuttings. They evaluate it by access rates.
Access is defined by a simple relationship:
Access (A) = Infrastructure Stock (S) × Functionality (F)
Where F < 1 whenever services are unreliable, intermittent, or unavailable.
Governments often report S. Citizens experience A.
If A does not rise, infrastructure has failed its purpose.
Roads: Built, But Not Bridging
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (2024), a significant proportion of Nigeria’s road network remains in poor or failed condition, particularly in rural and peri-urban areas. World Bank assessments of rural access repeatedly note that road construction does not automatically translate into year-round passability.
This distinction matters.
Under the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP), Nigeria has invested heavily in road rehabilitation (World Bank, 2020; 2024). Yet even in project-covered states, surveys show that many rural roads remain seasonally unusable, cutting off communities during rainy months.
A road that works six months a year provides half-access, not access.
In infrastructure terms, this is not delivery; it is partial compliance.
Electricity: Installed Capacity vs Lived Power
Power infrastructure illustrates the access gap most starkly.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) reports that while generation and distribution assets exist nationwide, actual electricity delivered to households remains erratic, with frequent outages and load shedding (NERC, 2024a; 2024b; 2025).
The key metric is not megawatts installed but hours of supply received.
If a household receives electricity for 8 hours in a 24-hour day, access is 33 percent, regardless of grid presence.
In many states, including Imo, reliance on private generators remains the norm. This shifts infrastructure cost from the state to citizens, turning “public power” into private survival.
Infrastructure exists. Access does not.
Water and Sanitation: Pipes Without Flow
Water infrastructure offers another stark example.
World Bank and WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme data show that millions of Nigerians rely on unimproved or unreliable water sources, even in areas where water infrastructure has been installed (World Bank, 2021; WHO/UNICEF, 2022).
The WASHNORM II report confirms that functionality—not presence—is the binding constraint. Boreholes fail. Piped systems break down. Maintenance budgets vanish.
A water project that stops working after commissioning does not fail politically.
It fails silently—on women, children, and the poor.
Read also: Falsehood No. 86 — Shared Prosperity, Measured Poverty
Health Infrastructure: Buildings Without Care
Health facilities are often counted by number. Access is measured by service readiness.
The Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (2019) and MICS/NICS (2022) show that many public health facilities lack consistent electricity, clean water, essential medicines, or trained staff.
A clinic without power cannot store vaccines.
A hospital without water cannot maintain hygiene.
A building without personnel cannot deliver care.
UNICEF’s 2024 reports underline that infrastructure deficits intersect with insecurity and underfunding to deny real access, particularly to children and rural populations (UNICEF, 2024a; 2024b).
Infrastructure is present. Outcomes are absent.
Digital Infrastructure: Coverage vs Connectivity
Nigeria’s National Broadband Plan (2020–2025) aims to expand digital infrastructure nationwide. Coverage maps show increasing reach. But access is constrained by affordability, reliability, and quality.
World Bank digital diagnostics make this clear: connectivity is not binary. It is graded. Poor quality connectivity limits education, commerce, and service delivery even where networks exist (World Bank, 2019).
A mast without stable service does not enable digital inclusion.
It signals intent, not outcome.
Why the Gap Persists
The access deficit is not accidental. It arises from a structural pattern:
Projects are evaluated by completion, not performance.
Budgets prioritize construction, not maintenance.
Political incentives reward visibility, not durability.
This creates what development economists call the infrastructure illusion—the appearance of progress without the substance of service delivery.
Once commissioned, projects exit accountability frameworks. Their failure becomes invisible.
Budgets Without Utility
BudgIT’s State of States reports repeatedly show that capital expenditure does not reliably translate into improved social indicators (BudgIT, 2025). States can spend heavily on infrastructure and still record stagnant or worsening access outcomes.
This is the central contradiction:
Spending ≠ Service
Without performance metrics tied to access, infrastructure becomes a fiscal ritual rather than a social intervention.
The Human Cost of Denied Access
Denied access compounds inequality.
Households with resources compensate—generators, boreholes, private schools, private clinics. Poor households cannot. Infrastructure failure therefore punishes poverty twice: once through taxes and again through exclusion.
This is how infrastructure becomes regressive.
It exists, but only the affluent can fully use it.
The Arithmetic of Failure
Return to the access equation:
A = S × F
Governments report S.
Citizens experience F.
When F → 0, A → 0, regardless of S.
No amount of construction can overcome dysfunction.
Verdict — Concrete Without Connection
The falsehood is not that infrastructure projects exist in Imo State. They do.
The falsehood is the implication that existence equals access, and access equals improvement.
Roads that do not connect.
Power that does not power.
Water that does not flow.
Clinics that do not treat.
This is not development. It is optics.
Until infrastructure is evaluated by who can use it, how often, and at what cost, claims of progress remain unsubstantiated.
Infrastructure is only meaningful when it disappears into daily life—when it works so reliably that it no longer needs to be pointed at.
Until then, access remains denied, even as concrete accumulates.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
Selected Sources
African Development Bank. (2024, April 25). African Development Bank invests $1.44 billion to support infrastructure development in Nigeria [Press release]. https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/press-releases/african-development-bank-invests-144-billion-support-infrastructure-development-nigeria-71042
BudgIT Foundation. (2025). State of States report 2025: A decade of subnational fiscal analysis—Growth, decline and middling performance. https://budgit.org/post_publications/state-of-states-report-2025/
Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy. (2020). The Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020–2025. https://adi.a4ai.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/NNBP_16_03_2020.pdf
National Bureau of Statistics. (2024). Road transport data (Q4 2023). https://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/elibrary/read/1241383
National Bureau of Statistics, & United Nations Children’s Fund. (2022). 2021 Nigeria Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) & National Immunization Coverage Survey (NICS): Statistical snapshots report. https://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/pdfuploads/2021%20MICS%20Statistical%20Snapshots%20Report.pdf
National Population Commission (Nigeria), & ICF. (2019). Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 2018. https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR359/FR359.pdf
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. (2024). NERC first quarter 2024 report. https://nerc.gov.ng/media/nerc-first-quarter-2024-report/
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. (2024). NERC second quarter 2024 report. https://nerc.gov.ng/media/nerc-second-quarter-2024-report/
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. (2025). NERC fourth quarter 2024 report. https://nerc.gov.ng/resources/nerc-fourth-quarter-2024-report/
United Nations Children’s Fund. (2024, September 9). Immediate action needed to protect Nigeria’s children and schools [Press release]. https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/press-releases/immediate-action-needed-protect-nigerias-children-and-schools
United Nations Children’s Fund. (2024). UNICEF Nigeria annual report 2024. https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/media/11161/file/Annual%20Report%202024.pdf.pdf
World Bank. (2019). Nigeria digital economy diagnostic report: A plan for building Nigeria’s inclusive digital future. https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/387871574812599817/pdf/Nigeria-Digital-Economy-Diagnostic-Report.pdf
World Bank. (2020, February 18). Nigeria—Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP) [Loans & Credits]. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/loans-credits/2020/02/18/nigeria-rural-access-and-agricultural-marketing-project
World Bank. (2021, May 25). Improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene services in Nigeria [Press release]. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/05/25/improving-water-supply-sanitation-and-hygiene-services-in-nigeria
World Bank. (2024, December 13). Nigeria to enhance road infrastructure to benefit four million in rural communities [Press release]. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/12/13/nigeria-to-enhance-road-infrastructure-to-benefit-four-million-in-rural-communities
World Health Organization, International Energy Agency, International Renewable Energy Agency, United Nations Statistics Division, World Bank, & World Health Organization. (2025). Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report 2025. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/2025-tracking-sdg7-report
WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. (2022). Nigeria 2021 WASHNORM II report. https://washdata.org/reports/nigeria-2021-washnorm-ii-report
