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It gladdens my heart that at
last some of the process of sales of our collective assets as a nation, which
have been covertly bequeathed in the name of privatisation to the very few, are
being reviewed especially when they have failed in their operations. I once
argued that the craze for privatization of our collective patrimony on the
excuses of failures of public service if not done cautiously we may end off
selling the Central Bank, Minting company, the police and even the army on the
pretext that they perform below expectation as government’s funded public
institutions.
Some have argued that the
present administration has not achieved anything than reversals. While I am not
speaking for the government, but as a Nigerian citizen, I must admit that most
of the reversals like the present one are in the interest of Nigeria, its
workforce and the economy. I wonder what could have happened to the cost of
living if the present government did not immediately reverse the sales of
refineries, increased fuel price and added VAT charges.
The recent press statement by
the Minister of Information and Communications, Mr. John Odey on the recent
decision over the sale of NITEL to octopus Transcorp, is a very courageous
action taken by the government after series of meeting on the plight of the
acquired company and notices for positive changes in NITEL but without any
progress from acquirers.
John Odey pointed out that
Transcorp failed in core areas of operational Liquidity, Planning and
Procurement, Network, Interconnectivity etc based on the purchased agreement
with Bureau for Public Enterprises and NITEL/MTEL. These failures of Transcorp,
he added has resulted in NITEL/MTEL losing subscribers, unable to attract new
investments to build up and maintain the network to increase their market share
and demoralized NITEL/MTEL workers. More shocking is that one year after
the take over, no staff has been given permanent appointment, a gross violation
of our National Labour Act (Cap. 198, Section 7 (i) and (ii), resulting in
continuing loss of experienced and competent employees to other operators.
Yet the same conglomerate has
stripped off NITEL by selling some of its assets to highest bidders considering
the admission of garrison-commander of Ibadan politics, Chief Lamidi
Adedibu that he bought one of the properties after an advertisement for
bidders. In fact the staff of the organization, who have been expressing
delight over the development, stated that the networks have almost collapsed
under Transcorp management. It has been discovered that apart from the sales of
some NITEL properties, many Nigerian workers have been sacked, salaries of
existing staff either delayed or have been withdrawn which further dampened
their morale.
As conventional practice all
over the world, public institutions, apart from being ran to protect security
and integrity of a nation, their staff are motivated with incentives to provide
efficient and affordable social services to the public. These incentives in
most public institutions in Nigeria are lacking, not even realistic wages are
provided that tend to force many into corrupt practices.
One wonders if some of the
rich, politicians including retired military generals are not the causes of
failures of some of the public institutions. Their incursions into public
service through coups and party-politics, as office holders were influenced to
further corner our collective wealth as they engaged in actions that are
detrimental to corporate existence of those institutions. They bastardised the
service through recruitments of their inexperienced cronies and relations to
serve as chief executives of those agencies while awarding arbitrary contracts
and sometimes on fictitious projects. Yet they had the gut to abuse the
ill-treated civil servants and the service as corrupt. Haba!
While destroying the
institutions, in their bid for material acquisitions, they either established their
own private enterprises to provide the service at exorbitant cost or on the
alternatives used the back door to acquire the so-called inefficient agencies
in the name of privatization. The same class of people who want us to pay
dearly for social services, when they were young had benefited from free
education, free healthcare and highly subsided and affordable social services
at the period we had functional and efficient internal security, electricity
and especially transportation services provided by Nigeria Airways and
Railways. Those public institutions were well managed by Nigerians. Today most
of those services are not affordable to the common citizens as they are largely
provided by profit-oriented private enterprises.
It is public knowledge that
some of the so-called successful private individuals apart from indulging in
conspiracy and insiders’ dealings, made their wealth from excessive
government’s patronage through inflated contracts, tax rebates, concessions and
policies that are sometimes detrimental to government’s responsibilities to its
citizens.
Not that one is against an
individual owning a business; at least we witnessed a genuine and sincere
process where ordinary documents (without a single pin) were offered by NCC as
licenses to telecommunication companies and the government raked in millions of
dollars without making a contribution. From the scratch the successful bidders
have successfully built their structures and infrastructures, recruited large
number of our graduates and provide indirect self-employment to million others.
Yet apart from engaging in massive corporate social responsibility activities,
these corporations return billions of Naira as taxes annually to the
government’s coffer.
It was suspected that the
unpatriotic leadership in charge of NITEL had engaged in insiders dealing to
give leverage to the emerging private telecom operators. At that time with a
single dial, calls went into NITEL lines from private networks and vice-versa. No
sooner than the operators started getting subscribers through patriotic access
facilities of NITEL, than the operators started to block in-coming and outgoing
calls to NITEL’s subscribers, a seeming deliberate and business conspiracy that
influenced the drop in NITEL customers. Interestingly the so-called incompetent
staffs of NITEL who had been frustrated by political leadership, are today some
of the experienced and well-paid staff in some of the private telecom
operators.
Nigeria’s public institutions
can perform better if there is motivation and sincerity of purpose from their
leadership. Today we are living witnesses to success stories of such reputable
institutions like NAFDAC, Pencom, NCC, EFCC, VON, SON, RMAFC, CBN amongst
several others whose chief executives have demonstrated leadership qualities
through political will, competence and unalloyed patriotism. While there are
similar successful private companies too ran by individuals, we may lose count
of several businesses and corporations ran as private entities that have
collapsed due to ineptitude and indiscipline of the owners.
The professed
due process and rules of law should not only be restricted to legal terms and
strict adherence to constitutionality that may delay the process, but also
timely intervention of government to protect its citizens and companies it has
stake in from derailing. It is a welcome development the latest decision of the
government to bring in new core investors that is an industry player with the requisite
focus, technical expertise, managerial experience and financial capacity to
take controlling shares in NITEL/MTEL.
We should encourage genuine
investors by providing enabling environment by which they can emulate telecom
operators who went through bidding for licenses and start from the scratch. If
they are desirous of revamping public institutions they can be offered
managerial responsibilities at fee and must be reputable not like pentascope
management. We must support the latest courageous actions of the government in
protecting our collective patrimony.
Yushau A. Shuaib
www.yashuaib.com
Abuja, Nigeria
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Authors 
Posted by Robot| 25.02.2008 10:58