RIVERS STATE UNIVERSITY

P. M. B. 5080 NKPOLU-OROWORUKWO
PORT HARCOURT.

ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC
CHALLENGES FACING PUBLIC SECTOR ASSET
MAINTENANCE IN NIGERIA.

PRESENTED
BY
IMOH, ESTHER SUNDAY
DE. 2017/5740
400 LEVEL

FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF OFFICE AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

COURSE TITLE
ASSET MAINTENANCE AND STORE MANAGEMENT

COURSE CODE
OIM 435

SUBMITTED
TO
DR. OKECHUKWU OMAH
COURSE LECTURER

JULY, 2021.

1
ABSTRACT
Lackadaisical attitude of Nigerians on maintenance culture has negatively affected
infrastructural development which is critical and essential to a Nation’s development.
Achieving vision 2050 goals would be attainable if existing structures and facilities are
constantly maintained. Poor maintenance culture has drawn the nation’s public sector a
thousand steps backward and one of the stride actions that could salvage the country from
the total mess of infrastructural decay is maintenance. This assignment aimed at
examining “CHALLENGES FACING PUBLIC SECTOR ASSET MAINTENANCE
IN NIGERIA”, through review of archival materials and participative observations. Poor
leadership, corruption, attitudinal problem and lack of maintenance policy were identified
as major causes of the menace. In conclusion, this assignment recommends the inclusion
of maintenance culture in national educational curriculum, maintenance policy
formulation and appointment of facility managers among others as necessary steps
towards making the country among the comity of developed nations.
KEYWORDS: Public Sector Culture, Asset, Maintenance Policy

INTRODUCTION
Maintenance culture in this study suggests the habit of regularly and consistently keeping
a building, machine, facilities, equipment, infrastructures etc in good and working
condition. In support of this assertion, Suwaibatul-Islamiah, Abdul-Hakim, Syazwina, &
Eizzatul (2012) posited that maintenance culture is the values, way of thinking,
behaviour, perception and the underlying assumptions of any person or group or society
that considers maintenance as a matter that is important and practices it in their life. If a
nation must develop, it is imperative that installation as well as maintenance of its
existing facilities be given priority. This is more so for developing nations like Nigeria
where there is a huge gap between the supply and demand for such facilities due to high
rate of population growth and other factors (Dabara, Ankeli, Guyimu, Oladimeji, &
Oyediran, 2015).

Nigerian government, according to Eti, Ogoji, & Probert (2006), took certain economic
steps towards being among the best twenty economies in the world by the year 2020.
Attaining sustainable infrastructural development by successive governments and
2
cultivation and practicing maintenance culture are essential in achieving this vision.
Infrastructure facilities generally referred to as economic and social overhead capital
which includes education, water supply, sewage systems, and energy. Others are postal
and telecommunication services, transport system, hospitals and roads (World bank,
1994; Oluwasegun, Okorie, Dabara, & Abdulazeez, 2013; Dabara, Lawal, Adebowale,
Ankeli, & Gambo, 2016). Governments (Federal, State and Local), private organizations
and individuals need to have a strategy on how to maintaintheir infrastructural facilities
to ensure sustainability of same. This can be achieved through maintenance culture which
is said to have a correlation with national development. It is common knowledge that the
deplorable state of public facilities in Nigeria poses great concern to stakeholders.
Facilities at Nigeria’s airports, hospitals, schools, roads etc would give indication that the
society lacks an agent that would have helped manage, ensure effective and efficient
functioning of the facilities as well as fostering national development.

Nahimah (2008), while working on the state of Nigerian Aviation Industry, opined that
the flaws in the Nigerian Aviation sector was attributed to lack of maintenance culture
and the training of professional engineers. The author further argued that, acquiring
aircrafts is not as relevant to the industry as good maintenance of the existing ones,
adding that a well maintained aging aircraft is as good as a poorly maintained new
aircrafts. This paper wholly agrees with the author.

Existing maintenance records as posited by studies carried out by Eti, Ogoji, & Probert
(2006) and Omotehinshe, Dabara,. & Guyimu, (2015) had suggested the deteriorating
nature of public facilities in terms of street lights that were erected some years back by
the past and present governments that would have served as means of beautification and
illumination in our society, but due to lack of maintenance culture in terms of bulbs
replacement or fixing minor faults has turned our roads to death traps and hubs of illicit

3
games, such as arm robbery stations. Contribution of private organizations into national
development cannot be over-emphasized in term of facilities construction
(industrialization), environment conservation, employment generation and assisting
government businesses through prompt payment of taxes.

These, opined Nahimah (2008), are achievable when companies’ operational facilities
(machines) are continuously reliable, available and maintainable throughout their
installed service years. Eti et al. (2006) opined that a developing society needed to adapt
to change and faster creativity. To these authors, the pursuit of continual improvement,
implementing wise maintenance schedule are essential for contemporary years. They
further argued that challenges in maintenance management among Nigerian industries
resulted in low availability of materials, and productivity which eventually could lead
into the closure of certain industries. Assets and facilities are essential to an
organisation’s resources, thus improving the working environment and well-being of
their maintenance is an important aspect that should be given serious attention. This is
where there is need for adequate and constant maintenance awareness for all the members
involved in the organisation’s facility management towards achieving the cooperate goal
of the firm. However, the problem of maintaining the Nation facilities has become an
important agenda for the country and mounts pressure on government in the aspect of
managing its assets and facilities, (Annies, 2007; Ajibola, 2009; Ankeli, Dabara,
Oyediran, Guyimu, & Oladimeji, 2015).

We therefore, as agents of national development for improving the quality of

infrastructure in our society, need maintenance culture at governmental level and private
sectors as well as individual levels. It is on this note that, the assignment addresses
challenges of facing public sector asset maintenance in Nigeria.

4
OVERVIEW OF PUBLIC SECTOR
Public sector assets are non-living things without regenerative cells. Their atom, the
smallest physically indivisible particle of any element, has no life in them. They
therefore, need to be maintained and rehabilitated. According to Ogbimi (2018), Capital
investments in public sector merely assemble capital assets which are Depreciating
Assets (DAs) because they begin to depreciate in intrinsic value with time and usage
immediately they are acquired or erected. Public sector assets of any nation are the
critical physical public sector s like roads, railways, buildings, bridges, electricity and
telecommunication grids and underground cables, waterways, airways, markets,
hospitals, educational facilities, security facilities, waste management plants, sewerages
and drainages, parks etc, necessary for the effective operation of a community.

Public sector assets is the basic physical and organisational structures needed for the
operation of a society like housing, security, industries, buildings, roads, bridges, health
services, governance and so on. It is the enterprise or the products, services and facilities
necessary for an economy to function (Sulivan and Sheffrin, 2003). Public sector must
be embarked upon to stimulate the people to create wealth catalytically.

The word public sector has been used in English since at least 1927 according to Online
Etymology Dictionary (2012), originally meaning "The installations that form the basis
for any operation or system". Public sector assets in developing countries connotes roads
and transport public sector s.

Public sector development is one of the bases of assessing the achievements of

democratic leaders and it is the foundation of good democratic governance. Agitation for
infrastructural development in Third World countries like Nigeria is higher in democratic
government than in military dictatorship or compared to developed countries. This is

5
because the resources for provision of public sector are always scarce. Ethnic-interest
agitation and lobbying are common things in democratic governance in developing
countries. This is why the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in United Kingdom,
advised that public sector project initiation should be done by an office specifically
established to do this job (P3O, 2008).

The Infrastructural report of Nigeria just like any third world country is nothing to write
home about. The housing situation is in a sorry state both quantitatively and qualitatively
(Agbola, 1998; Ajanlekoko, 2001; Nubi, 2000; Onibokun and Kumuyi, 1996 and
Oyedele, 2012). Most public sector s are now decayed and/or disserviced and need repair,
refurbishment, rehabilitation or replacement. Adegboye (2017, p. 27) stated that “the
deplorable state of Nigerian roads can best be described as a national shame and
embarrassment. This is because most of the roads across the nation, whether Trunk A
roads which are federal, or Trunk B which are state roads or Trunk C roads which are
local government roads, are in decadent state, and there is hardly any part of the country
that can boast of decent motorable roads.

When it was built in Ikoyi in 1976, the Federal Secretariat, Lagos, Nigeria, was not only a
signature of architectural masterpiece, its sheer opulence also stamped on global
consciousness the country’s arrival into the oil boom era. But its glory was consigned to
the trash can of history in 1991 when it was abandoned following the relocation of the
country’s capital to Abuja (Aderibigbe, 2015). “Henceforth, expenditure profile of the
nation’s public sector development programme would rise from the current three to five
percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to an average of nine percent, over the next
30 years.

6
The spending agenda, scripted to achieve the long term National Integrated Public sector
Master Plan (NIIMP) also put expenditure on public sector maintenance at an estimated
two per cent of the GDP” (Ogidan, 2013).In this direction, the Minister of National
Planning, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, stated that yearly investment in public sector will
have to rise to $25billion (about seven per cent of the GDP) from the current $9billion to
$10billion (about four per cent of the GDP). The overall profile is in the region of
$2.9trillion over the 30year period. 48% of this amount will be picked by private sector
partners under Public-Private Partnership (PPP) initiative, while the remaining 58% will
be bored by the governments.

Public sector development in democratic governance is more challenging because of the

accessibility of people to government and involves identifying the right project, carrying
out feasibility and viability studies and embarking on physical development of the
project. The challenges are numerous and include finance, technology for development,
maintenance and design. The literacy level is low in developing nations and this means
that few people can analyse development. Most successors in government, if not from the
same party, will not continue and/or finish a project started by the previous government
because of where the credit goes.

The challenges also include quality requirements of projects to meet international

standard and to be sustainably developed. Projects must meet the carbon emission
standard set by international organizations like International Standard Organisation
(ISO). Air is captured and analyses are done in communities to ensure that they emit as
little greenhouse gases (GHGs) as possible. Human settlements must be bio-diversified
with co-habitation of other animals and plants and natural environment must be
conserved for sustainable development and so on.

7
Tradesmen and other technical human resources needed for infrastructural development
are scarce because of lack of training and motivation. “As a result, many professional
people, tradesmen and senior managers are migrating to other countries” (Robbins,
Judge, Odendaal and Roodt, 2009).Because of fast money, most youths that supposed to
learn a trade are now “commercial motorcycle riders” in Nigeria.

The numerous challenges have not been tackled as they should. Nigeria's lack of basic
public sector to facilitate sustainable development and trade – both regionally and
globally – and to ensure competitiveness is already known by all. In particular, for the
large number of agricultural produce, they are not processed and are not stored, hampered
by weak transport and energy public sector.

CONCEPT OF ASSET MAINTENANCE

Assets are the centerpiece of your organization. In today’s economic environment, there
is no room for downtime, losses in production, or poor quality. Though maintenance
teams are recognized for their ability to keep assets running, businesses try to squeeze as
much value out of their assets as possible. Therefore, organizations must practice asset
management. In the finance industry, asset management is related to managing
investments. When related to an industrial environment, asset management is the process
of maximizing the value an asset provides to an public sector throughout its entire
lifecycle, in the most cost-effective manner. For this asset management definition,
“assets” includes any physical items such as equipment, buildings, vehicles, tools, and
property.

Nevertheless, once assets are identified and their locations, conditions, and specifications
are known, a basic maintenance care plan can be created. Depending on an asset’s current
condition, importance, and risk of failure, different maintenance strategies may be

8
employed. For example, corrective maintenance may be used on production assets that
run infrequently and will be relatively inexpensive to fix in case of failure. On the other
hand, highly critical assets – such as those that run constantly and whose failure would
result in thousands of dollars in lost production – will benefit from comprehensive
preventive maintenance. Given the complexity of managing maintenance plans on
hundreds to thousands of assets, organizations invest in a computerized maintenance
management system (CMMS). As part of a complete asset management strategy, you can
use a CMMS to plan, schedule, and execute maintenance activities that keep assets
running. Additionally, CMMS tracks asset service history, including the labor resources,
materials, and budget used to complete maintenance activities.

OVERVIEW OF MAINTENANCE

British Standards Institute (1974) considered maintenance as the combination of technical

and administrative actions taken to preserve or protect a structure, system or equipment to
function properly. On its own part Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2009) defines
maintenance as the action or process of preserving an object, activity etc. While Kumar &
Suresh (2008) postulated that maintenance is an action taken to prevent a device or
component from failing or to repair normal equipment degradation experienced with the
operation of the device to keep it in proper working order. This paper therefore considers
maintenance as a process of preserving an asset or facility in its state of continuous use
and function, above a minimum acceptable level of performance, over its design span
life. Companies undertake efforts to reduce costs and at the same time improve quality
and productivity. These efforts include an examination of the maintenance requirements.
The production system of any company requires effective maintenance attention
necessary for its continuous functioning (Omotehinshe, et al., 2015a).

9
This will increase equipment life, availability and retains its proper functioning. Poorly
maintained equipment may conversely lead to more frequent failure of the equipment,
low utilization rate and delaying of production schedule. Equipment that is
malfunctioning or misaligned may cause a higher scrap rate or produce products with a
questionable quality. Swanson (2001) considered poorly maintained equipment as a
necessary evil. This is contradicted by Alsyouf (2007) who saw regular facility
maintenance as a source of profit making rather than just unavoidable and unpredictable
expenses. Needs for Maintenance A thorough adherence to a well-defined and developed
maintenance strategy will take care of facility breakdown or malfunction thereby
allowing facility managers to concentrate on capitalisation (Omotehinshe et al., 2015a;
Akinyemi, Gambo, Ankeli, & Dabara,2016).

In the absence of this, measurable time will be required to develop and define a
maintenance strategy, communicate it, and last focusing on the tactical choice, for how to
achieve it. Tactics are the actual activation needed to implement the strategy, which
concerns the management of processes, people, and physical asset infrastructure
(Camphell & Reyes-Picknell, 2006). The management’s objectives must be realized in
accordance with safety, environmental regulations and also in a cost effective way. The
integration of machines, men, methods and means into a well-designed strategy requires
indispensable managerial capacity (Waeyenberghad & Pintelon, 2002).

Below are some of the accruable benefits if maintenance culture is embraced in our
public sector:

 Keeping assets in utmost working condition in order to minimize downtime and

disruption to services

10
  Keeping facilities in a state of good repair for the owner’s health and safety

 Keeping assets from deteriorating in appearance and aesthetics

 Keeping facilities so as to optimally achieve their full potential service life

 Leveraging efficiencies that can be reflected on the owner’s statement of financial

position

 Satisfying a legislated duty that is owed to owners, occupants and guests on the
property

 Preventing unnecessary damage to assets or facilitation that may result in their

performance failure

MAINTENANCE TAXONOMY

There are many philosophies of maintenance. However this assignment intends to limit
itself to those that concerned public sector facility maintenance, some of which are
discussed below:

Planned Maintenance: The maintenance organized and carried out with fore thought,
control and the use of records to a predetermined plan. Unplanned maintenance: The
maintenance carried out to no predetermined plan. This is the restoration of sudden
defective facility to its functional state.

Preventive maintenance: The maintenance carried out at predetermined intervals or

corresponding to research criteria and intended to reduce the probability of failure or the
performance degradation of an item. Preventive maintenance is an action performed on a
time or machine run based schedule that detect, preclude, or mitigate degradation of a

11
component or system with the aim of sustaining or extending its useful life though
controlling degradation to an acceptable level (Kumar & Suresh, 2008). This approach to
maintenance management is predominantly recurring or time-driven tasks performed to
maintain acceptable levels of availability and reliability (Mobley, 2002).

Comprehensive preventive maintenance programs schedule repairs, adjustments machine

rebuilds for all critical equipment while more limited programs only consist of minor
adjustments and lubrication. The scheduling guideline for these programs is the common
denomination due to the fact that, all preventive maintenance management programs
assume that equipment will degrade within a certain period of time (Mobley, 2004). The
strategy is cost effective, energy saving as well as increased component life cycle and
reduced equipment or process failure. The problem with the preventive approach to
maintenance is that the operation mode and plant specific variables have a direct impact
on the normal operating life of equipment. For example does the mean time between
failure (MTBF) vary between a pruning handling water and one handling abrasives.
Mobley, 2004 opined.

Corrective Maintenance: The maintenance carried out after a failure has occurred and
intended to restore an item to a state in which it can perform its required function. This
maintenance strategy is simple and straightforward, “fix it when it breaks” (Mobley,
2004) i.e. the defective items are fixed either after failure or during failure (Moubray,
1997). The corrective technique does not take any maintenance action until failure
occurred. This maintenance management philosophy is rarely used altogether without any
preventive tasks, (lubrication and adjustment). Still, in a corrective environment, the
equipment are not rebuilt nor repaired in greater extent until it fails to operate (Mobley,
2004). This enjoyed low cost investment for maintenance and few staff is required.

12
Emergency Maintenance: The maintenance which is necessary to put in hand
immediately failure occurred to avoid serious consequences, (Mobley, 2004). This is
sometimes referred to as day-to-day maintenance, resulting from such incidences as gas
leaks and damage.

Schedule Maintenance: The preventive maintenance carried out to a predetermined, say,

interval of time, number of operations or mileage. Condition-based maintenance: The
preventive maintenance initiated as a result of knowledge of the condition of an item
from routine or continuous monitoring.

MAINTENANCE CULTURE

According to Suwaibatul et al. (2012), Maintenance culture is the values, way of

thinking, behaviour, perception and the underlying assumptions of any person or group or
society that considers maintenance as a matter that is important (priority) and practices it
in their life. When a person or group has maintenance culture, they would have the
attitude to maintain, preserve and protect the public facilities. Maintenance culture is not
universal in nature, Florence (2011) postulated. It is usually derived or learns through a
person making maintenance a natural daily practice that can be followed and emulated by
others. According to Mark et al. (2006), the concept of maintenance culture is the internal
environment between management and staff in ensuring effective maintenance through
the sharing of ideas, beliefs, and values of each member in an organization. Developing
and embracing maintenance culture through effective leadership, sound policy, attitudinal
development among others would not only enhance national development but also enlist
our country among the comity of developed nations.

CHALLENGES FACING PUBLIC SECTOR ASSET MAINTENANCE IN

NIGERIA

13
The following are some of the identified factors responsible for the poor maintenance
culture in our society:

CORRUPTION: Obayelu (2007) defines corruption as an effort to secure wealth or

power through illegal means for private gain at public expense; or a misuse of public
power for private benefit while Lipset & Lenz (2000) compared the growth of corrupt
practices, in all its manifestations with human race. Ogundiya (2009) in his work saw
corruption as the exploitation of public position, resources and power for private gain.
Corruption is not only found in democratic and dictatorial politics, but also in feudal,
capitalist and socialist economies. Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist cultures are
equally bedevilled by corruption (Obayelu, 2007). Corruption has threatened our national
development because there is no effective and functional mechanism that can control the
menace. A sitting government awards projects (without means of its completion) only to
be abandoned by its successor due to personal gain. One government would award
projects and build infrastructural facilities while successive government who should
maintain and consolidate on existing ones would totally abandon them because they
believed that awarding new projects at inflationary cost would profit the administration
rather than the public.

LEADERSHIP: Good and effective leadership is essential to national development.

Ability to formulate policy, transform potential to reality and proper leadership to
subordinate are the major features of a sound leader. Leadership is the process of
influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it,
and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared
objective (Yukl, 2006). Leadership also is the shifting of owns vision to high sights, the
raising of man’s performance to higher standards, the building of man’s personality

14
beyond its normal limitations (Peter, 1977).Few among our leaders are up to the tasks
whereas majority of them really have no ingredient of effective leadership which may
account for why most of the Nation’s facilities are in shambles and decay. It is a general
believe that one cannot give what one doesn’t have. Most of our leaders lack maintenance
culture, vision, passion and empathy (Omotehinshe et al., 2015b) which are some of the
leadership ingredients required to influence and stimulate people’s behaviour towards
maintaining and sustaining existing facilities.

ATTITUDINAL PROBLEM: More worrisome is Nigerians attitude towards

government property as well as their private properties. Public office holders, according
to Peter (1977), hardly rehabilitate their official buildings or facilities until when such
assets stand the danger of risking the life of the users. It is common knowledge in Nigeria
that most incoming governments make little or no efforts in keeping existing facilities in
a proper shape through maintenance and rehabilitation rather they would abandon the
inherited facilities and embark on new ones with a view to draining the little resources of
the state. Nonchalant attitude, noted Omotehinshe et al. (2015a), of individuals towards
their health, building, cars amongst other had made them to spend huge amount of money
on things that ought to have been prevented or rehabilitated through the act of
maintenance program.

LACK OF POLICY: Another reason why most of our public and private facilities are
in total state of mess is non-existence of maintenance policy. Policy is a law, regulation,
procedure, administrative action, incentive or voluntary practice of governments and
other institutions. There is no single blue print, program or scheme is it federal or state
level on how public facilities should be maintained. Our elected legislators, both at the
federal and state levels, are yet to take concrete steps in promulgating effective laws that

15
would take cognisance of major maintenance problems encountered in the administration
of public facilities. On their own part, executive arms are busy inaugurating ad-hoc
committees or agencies on how to sustain, maintain and rehabilitate the nation’s facilities
in order to handle the national development.

CONCLUSION

Maintenance culture is a bedrock of infrastructural and facility development which

should not be taken with levity if vision 2020 attainment is to be achieved. Poor
leadership, lack of maintenance policy, attitudinal problem and corruption are identified
among others as the major causes of poor maintenance. Different maintenance strategies
that could be adopted to retain and continuously keep facilities in a safe and good
working condition were examined. Also suggested in the assignment are formulations of
maintenance policy, inclusion of maintenance culture in our educational curriculum,
appointment of facility manager – all towards ensuring Nigeria is better positioned in the
accomplishment of her vision 2050 goals.

16
REFERENCES

Adeleye, S.I. (2009). Maintenance Practice in Nigeria Public Sector, Policy, Budgeting
and Legislative Issues. A paper presented at “Sensitization Campaign or
Maintenance Culture” Organized by National Orientation Agency, Oyo State
Directorate, Ibadan.

Ajibola, J.K. (2009). Maintenance Culture in Public Sector in Nigeria: Problems and
Challenges” A paper presented at “Sensitization Campaign on Maintenance
Culture” Organized by National Orientation Agency, Oyo State Directorate,
Ibadan.

Akinyemi, A. P., Gambo, M. D., Ankeli, I. A., & Dabara, I. D. (2016). Building collapse
in Nigeria: Issues and Challenges. Conference of the International Journal of Arts
and Sciences 09(01), 99 - `108.

Alsyouf, I. (2007). The Role of Maintenance in Improving Companies’ Productivity and

Profitability. International Journal of Production Economics, 105(1), Pp. 70-78.

Annies, A. (2007). Current Issues and Challenges in Managing Government’s Assets and
Facilities.

British Standard Institution BS 3811, (1974). Glossary of general terms used in

Maintenance Organization, London: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Lawal, K. O. & Agidi, M. O. (2016). Residential housing rental values and infrastructural
development in Osogbo, Nigeria. Conference of the International Journal of Arts
and Sciences, 09(01), 29 – 40.

Oladimeji, E. J. (2015). Housing Condition and Residential Property Values in Ede,

Nigeria. Proceedings of the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Conference,
08 (01), 53- 61.

17