Reengineering Inland Waterways: System Alignment and the Political Economy of Infrastructure Failure in Nigeria’s Niger–Benue Corridor

Abstract

Infrastructure investment is widely viewed as a catalyst for economic transformation, yet many large-scale projects fail to generate sustained value. This paper examines this paradox through Nigeria’s inland waterways, focusing on the 2009–2012 Warri–Baro dredging project. Despite substantial public investment and technical completion, the project failed to deliver commercial navigation or economic impact.
The paper advances a system alignment framework, arguing that infrastructure performance is a multiplicative function of three conditions: institutional coordination, demand anchoring, and technical sustainability (P = I × D × T). Using a qualitative case study and comparative analysis with China, USA, Netherlands, Europe, and Brazil, the study shows that the Warri–Baro project suffered from mis-sequenced investment, fragmented governance, the absence of binding cargo commitments, and a technically inadequate design in a dynamic hydrological environment. Political economy factors—corruption, policy discontinuity, elite capture—are specified as moderating conditions rather than core dimensions. These misalignments produced infrastructure that existed in form but not in function.
Comparative analysis demonstrates that successful inland waterways operate as integrated economic and institutional ecosystems. Evidence suggests that reengineering Nigeria's Niger–Benue system through coordinated governance, engineered infrastructure (locks and canalization rather than dredging), and industrial integration could reduce freight costs by 60–70% and generate US$1.08 billion in annual transport cost savings. The framework may be generalizable to rail, energy, and logistics networks, though this requires empirical testing beyond the waterways focus of the present study.