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NLC warns FG against selling refineries, NTA, NAN, others

By on March 31, 2014
Nigerian Labour Congress has advised the Federal Government against selling of public properties.
It also urged the National Assembly to probe all previous sales and retrieve public properties that may have been sold to private interests. 

In a statement on Sunday, the NLC President, Abdulwaheed Omar said “the haste with which government seemed  determined to sell off public properties to members of the ruling class and their cronies under the guise of making them more efficient was alarming.”
The union’s position was a reaction to a statement by the Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Mr. Benjamin Dikki, who said the National Council on Privatization had listed the nation’s four refineries for possible privatisation this year.
The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Deizani Alison-Madueke had earlier in the year said that the Federal Government was ready to privatise the refineries. Following opposition from the organised labour, the government rescinded and said there was no such plan.
Dikki also said the NCP had approved the partial privatization of the Bank of Industry and the Bank of Agriculture; privatisation of the Nigeria Commodity Exchange, Skypower Catering & Hotel Services and commercialisation of national parks.
He added that efforts were on to conclude the guided liquidation of NITEL/MTEL and the policy/legal and regulatory framework review to prepare the ground for the commercialisation of the media enterprises – NTA, FRCN, National Films Corporation and the News Agency of Nigeria.
In the statement titled, “stop selling public properties”, the NLC said, “There  is the need  for  caution  because these properties belong to the Nigerian people as a collective wealth and the people have never been consulted and their interests considered before the sales.
“It is scandalous that the same government who had always promised to use the gains from petroleum price increases, which it has received over the years, to reactivate existing refineries and build additional ones can turn around to announce the privatization of refineries.
“This is clearly unacceptable, and the public have strongly opposed this attempt several times in the past, even on the floor of the National Assembly.”

The NLC said there was no evidence that previous privatization yielded positive results as electricity supply had worsened under the recent privatization of the power sector.

 

 

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