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Privatisation is not the solution, government should rise to its responsibility – Wogu

By BusinessNews Staff on November 24, 2013

Barrister Christian Wogu Esq.is a Principal Counsel at Shechinah Law House; the president of Shechinah Business School and an author. In this interview with Saturday Vanguard Business, he reveals how government’s inability to set standards in the Nigerian system has created avenue for privatisation, thereby increasing the rate of unemployment, insecurity, criminality etc. Excerpts:

Shechinah Business school, what gap did it come to fill in the Nigerian economy?

Christian Nwogu is a trained lawyer and practicing lawyer. Now within the context of the Nigerian economy, you ask yourself what are the prevalent challenges, or what is even one challenge that if it is solved today a lot of things will come together. If you ask ten people this question they would give you ten different answers. People are saying it is corruption, yes it is a challenge but for me, the challenge I feel that is monstrous which I intend to describe as pandemic is the challenge of unemployment. So, Shechinah Business school is a corporate systems institution.

Most business schools in the economy including academic schools deal with management, they want to breed managers and very few persons are addressing their minds to business ownership and the reason has made it that foreigners have now dominated our economy because they are basically those that apply their minds to ownership, owning businesses.

Somehow we are satisfied with being employed, managing and so most of the business schools in the system address issues about management; strategic management, information management and several types of management. But Shechinah business school was born to address the issue of real business ownership, breed corporate giants, breed multi-nationals from the grassroots.

Youth unemployment, insecurity are on the rise, and there are resources to curb these menace, why are we not getting results?

Youth unemployment is big in this country because of colossal wastage. You can’t image how Nigeria wastes manpower in this country. I will tell you in my take why there is not only youth unemployment, but unemployment across board. It’s more lamentable because youths are involved and when youths are involved you are destroying tomorrow. Incidentally, I have always held this opinion without apology.

I think that our oil is causing the unemployment. If we didn’t have oil, government would need people to work, it has to rely on internally generated revenue. Government will be pushed to think. But because we have oil, the proceeds that come from oil everyday and every month allocations are given to state governments, local governments and these allocations disguise as earnings, even for the banks, insurance companies and everybody is just having money that has not been really worked for.

That is why it is called natural resources. That being the case, things work, government runs because there is oil money. Banks run because there is oil money. So, there is no incentive to drive the economy and get human beings to begin to function. Now it is a big challenge because we are wasting manpower and it’s going into fraud, kidnapping, criminality, prostitution etc. because we are not engaging hands and if you don’t engage the people that should earn to handle their responsibility, the result is what we are seeing today, because the people must earn. If most criminals were engaged properly it would have reduced the number of criminals, even though it is not an excuse for crime but these things run in counterparts. You must do your part as a pressman, I do my part and everybody does his or her part so that things can be reduced to margin.

Now government is handing over some national projects like PHCN and others into private management, does it mean that government can’t deliver results despite being in control of oil proceeds and other national revenue generation. Must we privatise before things work out in this country?

Thank you profoundly for this question. In my take privatisation is another way government has shown that they don’t have the capacity to even be in government in the first place. If you like, call it privatisation, commercialisation or concenssionairing, it is another way whoever that is in government is saying in the first place, I lack capacity to even have come into government.

Let’s agree that those sectors privatised are not working, are they the only things that are not working in Nigeria. The legislative arms, are they working? Should we sell them because they are not working? Should we sell the judiciary because cases are being piled up? Should we sell the police because people are complaining of road block issues? Should we sell the presidency because parties and people have issues with it? No! You don’t begin to sell tomorrow today just because something is not working.

It’s not working because manpower is not doing what it should do. It’s not working because people that earn salaries every month come to work one or two days in that whole month, and when they come to work in that one or two days in that month, they use out of the eight hours if at all they spend three hours in the work place and of the three hours they spend two and half hours seeing home video.

That is why it is not working. Why don’t we ask ourselves why is it not working while in other countries it is working. So, the people that would buy, if they buy and have the same way of resourcing the economy, their workers don’t come to work, and when they come, they pay much attention seeing home video, will it work? it will not work. I think that government should govern.

What I understand government to be in Nigeria is that everything about government has come down to be one thing, sharing of oil money. Somehow, that has become the understanding of what government in Nigeria should be, sharing of oil money. Therefore, people don’t want to sit down and pick the right command, make the right sacrifices, wake up early and sit behind their tables at 8 a.m, then put in the number of hours required of them. Why will it not work? Discipline those that need to be disciplined, and things would work.

It’s working in other places and our leaders travel to those places and see it’s working. They are not spirits but humans like us. We have sold so much and this sale incidentally is not only things we own in Nigeria even most of the property in overseas. I don’t know who gave this idea and where it is coming from. Now have Nigeria become better since we started selling.

[Vanguard]

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