Construction Project Failure and Abandonment in Kaduna State, Nigeria: An Analysis of the Causes Using the Relative Importance Index

The construction industry serves as one of the key players of a nation's economic growth, considering its role in infrastructural development, revenue generation, provision of jobs and shelter for the masses, enriching the esthetical view and influencing the growth of other key sectors of a nation. In this research, a study was carried out on the causes of construction project failures and abandonment in Kaduna state, Nigeria. The study’s objective was to identify the possible causes of failure and abandonment of construction projects and evaluate the identified causes in their order of importance. To achieve this, a quantitative research approach using questionnaires as an instrument for data collection in Kaduna state was adopted, using a total of One Hundred (100) survey-questionnaires distributed among professionals and workers in the construction industry. Analysis of the data acquired from the returned questionnaires was done using SPSS v26 and MS Excel 2016 to obtain the descriptive statistics and the Relative Importance Index (RII). From the ranking, Corruption (RII = 85.9%), Change in government administration (RII = 82.8%), Politics (RII = 82.8%), Government policies (RII = 81.9%) and Inadequate involvement of construction professionals (RII = 81.3%) were the five top ranking causes of project failure and abandonment in the study area. The Spearman rho correlation showed some significant but low relationship among the variables, while the Kruskal-Wallis test indicated the same distribution of all the variables among the construction professionals. The research also revealed that although insecurity was a burning issue for the industry especially in the study area, its ranking showed that it was not considered a significant factor in relation to the other factors.