Experts decry lack of budgetary allocation

Facility management experts gathered in Abuja, the official capital of Nigeria, to strategize on how to help the public sector imbibe a proper maintenance culture.

The normal saying in Nigeria is that the government lacks maintenance culture, but the Programme Director, International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Abuja chapter, Mr Collins Osayamwen disagrees.

Osayamwen said “I tend to a little bit disagree that Nigerians lack a maintenance culture, the reasons why we are unable to maintain our infrastructure, not even from government alone but even private is because from the word go, we get it all wrong. The kind of maintenance we know in Nigeria is breakdown maintenance, until it fails you don’t care whether it needs service or not.”

He suggested that there should be a synergy between the construction companies and facility managers, so that the level of infrastructural decay can be reduced.

Some experts also said the lack of budgetary allocation to cater for maintenance of infrastructure, is the cause of the appalling level of infrastructural decay in country.

Osayamwen added that 'Unfortunately we don’t have any budgetary provision to ensure that these facilities are managed and maintained. What we now do is to run from pillar to post when we have a crisis in our hands. Until we are able to give it its rightful place, we will continue to see this level of decay in our infrastructure.'