The Sea Empowerment and Research Centre (SEREC) has urged the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to audit industrial projects and establish mechanisms to recover stalled investments.

The centre’s head of research, Eugene Nweke, made the call in a policy note made available to journalists on Saturday in Abuja.

The document is titled: “Industrial Clusters in the FCT: Stopping Waste, Unlocking Abuja as Nigeria’s Productive and Economic Capital”.

Mr Nweke emphasised the need to measure actual economic outcomes from industrial projects.

He recommended a 90-day comprehensive audit of major industrial and economic clusters to establish land allocations, beneficiaries, project costs, capital deployed and infrastructure delivered.

The audit, he said, should determine operational enterprises, jobs created, tax and revenue contributions, outstanding obligations, reasons for delays, contractual milestones and current legal status.

“The audit should establish land allocated, beneficiary/developer, original project cost, actual capital deployed, infrastructure delivered.

“It should also establish the number of operational enterprises, jobs actually created, tax/revenue contribution, outstanding obligations, reasons for delay, contractual milestones and current legal status.

“There should be no more investment announcements without investment accounting,” he said.

He also recommended an FCT Industrial Infrastructure Recovery Fund to concentrate resources on strategic industrial zones rather than spreading interventions across numerous projects.

He said priority areas should include access roads, electricity, water, drainage, security, telecommunications, waste management, rail connectivity and digital infrastructure.

The SEREC official further recommended milestone-based public-private partnership (PPP) governance to ensure industrial land allocations progress from infrastructure development to factory construction and production.

He said milestones should cover equipment installation, commencement of production, employment creation, export performance and revenue generation.

According to him, industrial land should not become a store of speculative value.

“Where contractual obligations are persistently abandoned, government should have transparent legal mechanisms for recovery, reallocation or restructuring.

He proposed an Abuja investable enterprise programme to help businesses improve corporate governance, financial reporting, export readiness and technology commercialisation.

The programme, he said, should also provide access to development finance, investor match-making, environmental, social and governance compliance and capital-market preparation.

“The ultimate objective should be to produce bankable and investable Abuja enterprises, rather than merely increasing the number of registered companies,” he said.

Mr Nweke also proposed an FCT industrial coordination and investment desk linking the FCTA, Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), Abuja investments and relevant federal government agencies.

He said the mechanism should coordinate investors, developers, and financial institutions; eliminate regulatory duplication; resolve bottlenecks; and publish periodic performance reports.

He also proposed an “Abuja Industrial Productivity Index” to assess major industrial clusters annually using measurable economic performance indicators.

The indicators, he said, should include capital deployed, infrastructure completed, operational factories, jobs created, local value added, exports, taxes generated, private investment and land utilisation.

He said industrial clusters should not be treated as real-estate projects but as economic-production systems whose success must be measured by tangible economic outcomes.

Mr Nweke said Abuja’s reported increase in monthly internally generated revenue (IGR) from about N9 billion to more than N40 billion demonstrated the potential of institutional reforms.

He, however, emphasised that the next steps should not simply be to collect more revenue but to create more taxable economic activities.

According to him, this requires factories, technological companies, exporters, logistics enterprises, professional services, innovation hubs and globally competitive businesses.

Mr Nweke called for a shift from designation to deployment, from land banking to industrial production and from investment announcements to investment accountability.

(NAN)