Politics! At the time the only educated politicians were lawyers. Lawyers & industrialization don't mix well. The rest were...well... politicians. And they had other "more important agendas" like 
multi-party-ism.

There was also a decline in funding from the west due to the end of the cold war.

And a host of other management related factors that Kill the Moral of those behind the project.

I think the project would have taken off if it were conceived in the 70's.

If it had succeeded :-


Right now the conditions are different tho!
It would be nice to see another try