Femi Aborisade | Sale of National Assets is the Highest form of Corruption

As the debate on the sales of national as­sets to jump-start the economy rages on, there has been a lot of di­vergent views on the pro­posal.

Reacting to the propos­al, a human rights lawyer and labour activist, Com­rade Femi Aborisade, who described it as inimical, called on Nigerians to re­sist it.

But an associate profes­sor of Comparative Poli­tics at the University of Ilorin, Dr Gbade Ojo, said the proposal is the way to go, asserting that pub­lic utilities were not well managed.

Aborisade described the proposal as the highest form of corruption, add­ing that it showed that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is reac­tionary rather than pro­gressive.

He said: “Indeed, the greatest form of corrup­tion is the proposed plan to sell national assets. Sale of national assets is looting of public patrimony.”

According to the former governorship candidate of National Conscience Party (NCP) in Oyo State in 2003 elections: “The impression being created by the proposed sale of national assets is that APC is not an anti-corruption party but a party whose agenda is to fully and fi­nally dispossess or steal the common patrimony.

“The real problem of Nigeria is the APC. The change that Nigerians yearn for is actually to get rid of the APC in power and democratically install an anti-privatisation po­litical party”.

Rather, Aborisade ad­vised that, “If the Federal Government carries out a holistic, non-discrimi­natory fight against cor­ruption, the resources required to pool out Nige­ria from recession can be recovered from looters of public treasury.

But Ojo was emphatic in his submission that the mismanagement of national assets is a major contributory factor to the comatose of the economy, saying it has been proved globally that the civil ser­vice machinery could not be used to manage eco­nomic institutions.

In his words: “In fact, the Margret Thatcher (the former British Prime Minister) administration started the idea of PPP (Private-Public Partner­ship) management of public corporations in the UK and virtually all major countries in the world are keying into the economic principle.