To say it is hard to get around in Nigeria is an understatement. Only about 30% of Nigeria’s roads are paved. And even the paved roads are in terrible condition, with crater-sized potholes, stagnant pools of water, floods of waste, and disintegrating tarmac. Everyday commuters, who often sit in traffic for up to five hours daily, regard Nigeria’s roads as “death traps,” “deplorable,” and “dilapidated.” The low quality of Nigeria’s roads not only increases insecurity but also poses a major impediment to economic progress.

The poor quality of roads is not the result of insufficient funding allocated for road construction. Indeed, the Nigerian government has spent enormous amounts of money on road construction projects (approximately $922.2 million just last year). If this money was going where it was supposed to go, Nigeria’s roads should at least be decent. But the money is not going where it’s supposed to go. Very often construction firms bribe public officials to secure road contracts, and then the firms recoup the loss of the bribe by using low quality materials and substandard construction methods, resulting in roads that do not last even up to seven years. In some cases, contractors simply pocket the government money and disappear, abandoning their projects but simply pocket the government money and disappear. To take an especially high profile example of how massive road projects can be tainted by suspicions of corruption, a recent $13 billion highway project, commenced by President Tinubu in May 2024, was awarded—with no regard for a public bidding process—to a company of whose subsidiary Tinubu’s son is a director. In fact, Tinubu’s son owned an offshore company with the son of the tycoon who received the contract. (In 2000, that tycoon was convicted of money laundering and helping the Abacha regime siphon at least $120 million from the Central Bank of Nigeria.) This road project has been criticized for its lack of transparency, alleged fraud, and risk of noncompletion.

In short, corruption is one of the most significant reasons for Nigeria’s terrible road system. But the most effective way to improve road quality in Nigeria is to focus not directly on the corruption—even though that is the root cause of the problem. Of course, corrupt acts, in this context and others, should be caught and punished. But, rather than relying primarily on detecting and punishing corruption, the more effective way to address this problem would be to establish effective mechanisms to hold contractors and public officials accountable for the quality of the roads that are ultimately built. Enforcing performance standards will reduce incentives to engage in corruption—at least the sorts of corruption that have a significant adverse impact on quality.

More specifically, government road construction contracts should include clauses that obligate the contractor to address and remediate road problems that arise within a certain period of time after construction. Further, these contracts should specify that failure to promptly meet this obligation will result in significant monetary penalties, which will then be used to hire replacement contractors to conduct the repair work. Firms that fail to pay the penalties would face sincere consequences, including debarment or loss of operating licenses. Such a system would drastically reduce the incentive for firms to pay bribes to get contracts and then offset the bribe costs by using substandard materials or engaging in shoddy construction practices. This is because the firms will be on the hook for any repairs that are necessary within a reasonable time period. In fact, inefficient or incompetent contractors may decide not to bid on these projects at all, because the consequences for subpar performance could be catastrophic for their bottom line.

To be sure, there are a few concerns about this system that would need to be addressed. I highlight three of them and suggest how to handle them:

• First, the duty to repair would need to be enforced effectively. Because failure to comply with a duty-to-repair clause would be a breach of the contract, the government could sue the contractor in court. Litigation, however, is expensive and time consuming, and there is also the risk of corruption in the judiciary. So, as a complement to judicial enforcement of the contractual terms, Nigeria’s Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA), the agency responsible for monitoring and maintaining all federal roads in Nigeria, should partner with state governments to create an administrative court that manages the duty to repair claims in a more efficient manner. While FERMA itself does not have a pristine record of operating corruption-free, there are examples of specialized agencies and administrative tribunals within Nigeria that, when managed well, have been quite effective. The Nigerian Communications Commission, for example, has a history of penalizing operators who have failed to achieve their promised targets by fining and barring them until the standard service quality was achieved (see here, here, and here). Another example can be found in the National Industrial Court, which has successfully managed to protect employees facing unfair treatment and labor practices (see here, here, and here).
• Second, there is a risk that firms might attempt to bribe officials into silence, paying them so they do not report road issues and thus preventing the repair obligation from being triggered. These incidences underscore the fact that, although private citizens are the ultimate customers of government contracts in theory, this notion is often skirted in practice. To address this, the construction contracts should include a clause that enables private citizens to petition for the repair obligation be triggered based on their experiences with the quality of the road.
• Third, there is still the risk that contracts will be won by fly-by-night firms that disappear, or hide their assets, after they are paid on the contract. There are a couple of ways to deal with this problem. First, firms could be required to pay a performance bond upon winning the contract—an upfront sum that the firm would forfeit if they fail to complete the project on the agreed terms. Additionally, the government can and should require the disclosure of the identities of the individual owners and executives of the bidding firms, so that if the firm reneges on its obligations, these owners and executives cannot simply dissolve that firm and then create a new one under a different company name.

In short, quality control provisions within contracts—including an obligation to repair—may be a more effective check on corruption than other approaches. Indeed, this mechanism has the advantage that it directly addresses the core reason why citizens decry road-related corruption in the first place: poor roads. Duty-to-repair clauses may at least give citizens tangible legal leverage to get their roads fixed when it does occur.