The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has blamed the massive infrastructure challenge in Nigeria today on the sale of public assets which began in 1999.
He condemned successive governments since 1999 for disposing of critical government enterprises under the guise of privatisation, stressing that it is wrong.
He particularly blamed the Olusegun Obasanjo administration from 1999 to 2007 for selling such public assets as the then National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) the National Insurance Corporation of Nigeria (NICON) and the Nigerian Hotels Limited, among others.
He argued what the government should have done was to privatise the industry or the sector but not the enterprise.
He lamented that the ripple effects of that singular policy have been massive infrastructure challenges, massive savings challenges, massive unemployment and lack of where to train people.
“This is because in those days, if you finish school, you can join NEPA and they will train you. Many engineers in Nigeria today were produced there; many people who are great engineers today are products of NEPA.
“So, you have somewhere to go and work but we have destroyed the public works department. So if you see any state government in front of the camera trying to commission or start a 10km road, you will see one Lebanese person standing in front of them. Even simple works that they could do with the public works department, they will not.
“I have more equipment inside my compound, you know, than the entire ministry of works. I have more caterpillar equipment and other things that I create inside my private house than they have in the works department in Akure, Ondo State. So with that, what have we benefited from privatization?” he stated.
He argued that even with the privatisation of NITEL, there is still a telecommunication problem because most of the telecom companies still rely on NITEL exchange to function optimally.
“We also have a telecommunication problem because most of the carriers are still relying on NITEL; they are still relying on NITEL exchange and all of that. They do the company investment. So that will require them to carry broadband across the country but they can’t do that because the private sector will not do backbone investment,” he said.
He also queried the rationale behind the privatisation of the power company when the operators lack the capacity to run it efficiently and effectively.
“People are now generating electricity but what has happened is that many of these investments will rely on consumers to buy their own transformers,” he said.
He noted that what the government should have done was to open up the sectors instead of privatizing the enterprises. “What you privatize is the industry, the sector, not the enterprises. Privatization of government enterprises is wrong. What you need is to open the sector; that’s all,” he said.
He promised that his party, the SDP has a better idea, saying, “The idea is to reconstitute and raise new Nigerians who are going to now man these enterprises and then grow industries out of them.”
