ADC chieftain Barrister Kenneth Okonkwo has argued that Nigeria’s decades-long refinery crisis could have been avoided if former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s plan to privatize the nation’s refineries had not been reversed after he left office.
Speaking on Channels TV from 13:03, Okonkwo said, “Before Obasanjo left, he wanted to privatize the refineries and they had actually sold it to Dangote. It was reversed. I wish it had stood, because eventually Dangote now built his own.”
He asserted that successive governments had failed to keep the Refinery running. “And since that time to date, the government has been pushing money amounting to almost 20 billion dollars to repair the refineries. But it’s all gone down the drain. When something is privatized, it goes into private hands, it is no longer in the government’s control, and it lessens the burden.”
Okonkwo identified Nigeria’s telecommunications revolution as proof that privatization works, noting that before Obasanjo’s reforms, the country had only NITEL as its sole internet provider. Within six months of privatization, he said, the sector was transformed and Nigeria has since grown into one of Africa’s most active internet nations.
He argued that the telecom success story is a blueprint the successive governments should have followed with the refineries….Read_More…