THE PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT (PWD) AND PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE OPERATIONS IN COLONIAL SOUTHEASTERN NIGERIA, 1896 -1960

Abstract

One of Nigeria's greatest challenges to the realization of socioeconomic development since independence in 1960 is infrastructure deficit. Lack of effective repair and maintenance has enormously contributed to the widening of this deficit which has resulted in the continuous ebbing of the standard of living. This paper examines the operational history of the Public Works Department (PWD), an agency established by the colonial government in 1896 to among other tasks maintain and repair public infrastructure. It aims at gleaning essential repair and maintenance lessons from Nigeria's history to bridge infrastructure gap. Although public infrastructure maintenance and repairs in Nigeria have formed the subject of few scholarly works, hardly any focuses on the colonial era with attention on the PWD . This is owing to the assumption that since colonial infrastructure was exploitative, its history will have but little value. This paper argues to the contrary. More importantly, unlike existing works it seeks solution to infrastructure deficit using the study of a historical model - the PWD. It therefore adds a new flavour and contributes to the literature on infrastructure repairs in Nigeria. The paper adopts historical methodology involving the qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources presented in descriptive and discursive frameworks. Primary sources used include oral interviews, government documents and archival materials while secondary sources include published books, theses and journal articles. The paper finds that several strategies such as consistency, prioritizing, proximity, supervision among others were deployed by the PWD to ensure repair and maintenance success in colonial Southeastern Nigeria. It concludes that these are still useful today.