News Editor
Dear Readers,
Last week, an infographic made its way through our collective attention. It compared the cost of a 4.52-kilometre link bridge in Lagos—budgeted at approximately ₦61.73 billion per kilometre—with that of the Second Niger Bridge, a 11.9-kilometre crossing delivered at about ₦28.24 billion per kilometre. The conclusion many drew was simple: one appeared to cost more than twice the other per kilometre, despite being shorter and, at least on the surface, less complex.
What followed was even more predictable than the numbers.
There were those who saw the disparity and concluded—swiftly, confidently and with rage—that it must be corruption. Others questioned the comparison, pointing to differences in timelines, inflation, currency depreciation, and the peculiarities of urban versus inter-state infrastructure. Between these two camps, there were shades of nuance, but not nearly enough.
Few asked questions without already having answers. Fewer still showed curiosity without allegiance.
The conversation, like many before it, quickly became less about bridges and more about sides. Positions were taken, not because the evidence demanded them, but because prior loyalties did. The infographic did not create new opinions; it merely activated existing ones: Antigovernment Complainers and Progovernment Justifiers.
And yet, if we are willing—even briefly—to go against the current, we might discover that the most important issue here is not which bridge costs more, or who is to blame. The bridge, in truth, is not the point.
The point or better still, the larger point (in my daughter’s voice) is what the bridge reveals.
If we set aside, for a moment, the question of who managed the projects and adopt instead the perspective of citizens and consumers—people whose interest in public infrastructure is straightforward: quality at the best possible price—we begin to see something deeper and more troubling.
We begin to see the collapse of trust.
It is easy to dismiss distrust in government as normal. In Nigeria, it is often treated as a given, almost as a civic instinct. But what is familiar is not necessarily harmless. A society in which citizens instinctively assume that public projects are inflated, manipulated, or compromised is not merely sceptical—it is structurally weakened.
Trust is not a sentimental virtue; it is an economic and political asset.
There is no serious example—historically or geographically—of a society that has achieved sustained development without a reasonable level of trust in its institutions. Trust is what allows citizens to delay gratification, to invest in the future, and to comply with rules even when those rules are inconvenient. It is what makes long-term planning possible.
When trust declines, something else rises in its place: suspicion, impatience, and opportunism. People begin to behave as if the system cannot be relied upon. They look for shortcuts. They prioritise immediate gains over future stability. They disengage from formal processes and seek informal alternatives. In such an environment, even well-designed policies struggle to succeed because the behavioural foundation required to support them has eroded.
Seen through this lens, the bridge comparison is not simply a question of cost—it is a question of credibility.
When a large number of citizens look at a public project and assume, almost instinctively, that something is wrong, the issue is no longer limited to whether corruption exists. It is that the system lacks the legitimacy required to command belief.
This is a problem that cannot be solved by argument alone. It requires structural reform. It requires systems that are not only robust but visibly so. Procurement processes must be transparent, not selectively but consistently. Data must be accessible, not defensively but proactively. Decisions must be explainable, not only to experts but to the public. To achieve this, governance must be seen to be governed.
Yet, even as we confront the question of trust, there is another issue embedded in the bridge debate—one that is often invoked but rarely examined with sufficient seriousness: inflation.
It has become almost routine to explain away cost differences by referring to inflation and currency depreciation. The Second Niger Bridge was commissioned in May 2023. The Lagos link bridge followed in April 2026. In that interval, prices rose, the currency weakened, and costs increased. This is true. But it is not enough.
To accept, without deeper scrutiny, that such levels of inflation are normal or inevitable is to accept a quiet failure of economic management. Inflation is not merely a background condition; it is a policy outcome. It reflects choices—about money supply, fiscal discipline, exchange rate management, and institutional coordination. To invoke inflation as an explanation without interrogating its causes is to treat a symptom as if it were a natural occurrence.
Inflation, properly understood, is not a mild inconvenience. Inflation is a destabilising force that erodes purchasing power, distorts planning, and punishes those who attempt to act responsibly. It makes saving irrational, pricing uncertain, and contracts fragile. It rewards those who can move quickly, engage in sharp practices and penalises those who must plan carefully.
Consider its everyday consequences.
The tenant whose rent doubles not because of improvements in the property but because of rising costs. The worker whose salary, though nominally increased, buys less than it did a year ago. The family that abandons plans to acquire basic household items because prices have become unpredictable. The young professional who no longer considers long-term investment because the future has become too uncertain to calculate. These are not abstract effects. They are lived realities.
When inflation becomes persistent and unpredictable, it does more than raise prices—it alters behaviour. It encourages short-term thinking. It incentivises speculation over production. It weakens the very habits—saving, planning, investing—that underpin economic stability.
If corruption undermines trust, inflation undermines time. And yet, our policy responses often fail to reflect the seriousness of the problem. Rather than addressing the structural drivers of inflation, we frequently resort to palliative measures: salary increases, cash transfers, and, at times, the expansion of money supply itself. These may provide temporary relief, but they rarely restore stability. This way we are chasing prices rather than stabilising prices.
The result is a cycle in which each intervention addresses the immediate discomfort while leaving the underlying condition intact. Over time, the system becomes more fragile, not less. It is in this context that the comparison between bridges acquires its true significance.
It is not merely a question of whether one project was more expensive than another. It is a window into the interaction between governance, trust, and economic management. It is an opportunity—if we are willing to take it—to ask more fundamental questions.
What systems govern how public projects are conceived, priced, and delivered? What mechanisms ensure that those systems are transparent and credible? What policies are in place to stabilise the economic environment in which such projects are executed? What institutional arrangements sustain trust over time? These are the questions that matter.
To focus exclusively on who managed a project is to personalise what is fundamentally systemic. It reduces complex issues to individual accountability while leaving the structures that produce those outcomes largely untouched. This is not to say that individuals do not matter. They do. But systems matter more.
A system that depends on the integrity of individuals rather than the strength of its processes is a system that will eventually fail. Conversely, a system that is well-designed can produce acceptable outcomes even when individuals are imperfect.
If we are serious about development, we must shift our attention. Less about personalities, more about processes. Less about parties, more about policies. Less about intentions, more about consequences.
We must learn to see our bridges—and indeed all public projects—not as isolated events but as indicators. They tell us something about how we organise ourselves, how we allocate resources, and how we manage the relationship between the state and the citizen.
To look at a bridge and see only a structure is to miss its meaning. To look at a bridge and see the condition of our institutions—that is where understanding begins.
The challenge, then, is not simply to build better bridges. It is to build better systems—systems that command trust, control inflation, and deliver value consistently. Until we do that, the debates will continue. The numbers will circulate. The arguments will repeat themselves. And the bridges, however well constructed, will remain symbols—not of progress, but of questions we have yet to answer.
*Anthony Kila is a Jean Monnet Professor of Strategy and Development at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS). He is also the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Michael and Cecilia Ibru University (MCIU)
