Nigerian government appears to be grasping for straw in the mist of mounting economic distress. The honest truth is that Nigeria government from the local to federal level is near broke. The oil prices are not rising as expected and our OPEC quota of 2.2 million barrel of oil per day are not been met due to militant activities in the Niger-Delta region. Oil pipelines are being blown up with no coherent reason. The militants fail to understand that their activities are hurting their brothers, sisters, their town and village kinsmen, their state and the entire nation. Their activities are the most irresponsible and self-defeating act any human being can engage in. Hopefully, the militants will retrace their step someday. The militans revealed whom they are working for when they said few months ago that they will stop blowing up oil facilities if the federal government lead by Mr. Buhari will stop investigating all known corrupt politicians from Niger-Delta region.
Sale of Government assets that are being proposed appears to be ill-advised and not well thought out. It appears to be more like a fire-sale. The truth is that not much will be realized from the sale because some of government assets is not worth the paper it is written on. Some of these assets will require so much money to bring them up-to-standard that it may not be worth it for would be investors. I am not against sale or privatization of Nigerian government assets but I am suspicious of the timing and proponents of this idea. I believe that all Nigerian government assets should be sold or privatized with the exception of the oil and gas. All the refineries should have been sold long time ago along with the steel mills and Ajaokuta Steel plant. Nigeria would have been a much more wealthy and prosperous country if we had pursued an economy based on private enterprise compared to the socialist run economy we have engaged in since Nigerian independence. It is a fact that no government owned enterprises in Nigeria is making any profit today.
Sale of government assets should be done in a deliberate and calm manner. They need to be full inventory of the government assets and the assets the government is proposing to sell, and how much they are planning to sell them. The sales should be open to the whole world without preference to Nigeria investors. The reason for this is because some of the government assets the federal government are planning to sale will require enormous sum of money to bring them up to standard, and foreign companies stands the best chance to raise the required capital compared to we have seen from recent privatized government owned enterprises such as the power companies. Nigerian investors are known not to have the means to source enough capital that will bring the moribund industries to par with their counterparts overseas. Some Nigerian investors are known to strip assets from the government companies they purchased and the leave whatever remains to die a slow death.
Nigeria should sale most government owned assets as part of divestment effort and change economic direction from government run economy to private sector run economy. Sale of government assets is a good policy that must be executed with caution.