A foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, has said the economic plan released last week by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is a rehash of the 1986 economic policy of the infamous Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the General Ibrahim Babangida era.
In a statement yesterday in Abuja, Okechukwu, who is also the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), said the PDP flag bearer has nothing new to offer Nigeria.
Writing off Atiku Abubakar’s economic blueprint, Okechukwu said: “I watched with rapt attention but in deep regrets that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s Economic Plan delivered at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) last Monday is more or less like the nebulous economic policy of Structural Adjustment Programme’s (SAP’s) Pocketbook of 1986.
“The former Vice President harped profoundly on privatisation of state-owned enterprises as the fulcrum of his economic revitalisation programme, akin to SAP proponents of yore.
“Whereas one is not against private sector partnership; however, what we have in surplus are rent seekers, and scanty industrialists.
“Therefore, I am not surprised that a man who breached PDP’s constitution and, by extension, failed to unite his party, did not bother to do the needful assessment, which posits that 80 per cent of state-owned enterprises privatised under his chairmanship of the National Council of Privatisation (NCP) and indeed the 16 years of PDP leadership, went comatose.”
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The APC chieftain recalled that in 1999 when PDP came to power with Atiku as the Chairman of the NCP, the then ruling party dusted up the SAP Pocketbook and stripped the country’s national assets, including profitable companies like NICON Insurance, NICON Hilton Hotel, Niger Dock and unprofitable companies, like Distribution Electricity Distribution Companies (DEDCs).
He said: “Niger Dock, a profitable pre-privatisation company, had 6,000 workers under Nnamdi Ozobia. Today, it has gone under with less than 600 workers and the N1.72 billion proceeds allegedly missing.
“Secondly, NICON, one of Africa’s leading insurers originally owned by the Federal Government of Nigeria, was privatised in December 2005. With an asset base of N46.9 billion gathered over a 52-year period of operation, 30 branches and six regional offices, it is, therefore, modest to classify NICON as a colossus in the insurance industry, but has regrettably gone under the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) life support management.
“I challenge His Excellency to take a glance at the unintended consequences of the privatisation programme before taking us back to SAP Pocketbook, especially when the Federal Government has wasted over N2 trillion life support to electricity distribution companies privatised to improve our power supply. Today, the outcome is a crisis, which defeated the core objective of privatisation.
“I make bold to say that what Atiku is proposing is by no means different from SAP policy thrust; neither is his proposal on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) better than the giant steps that President Muhammadu Buhari has taken towards commercialism of the NNPC.
“If you ask me, His Excellency Atiku Abubukar should first unite his party, and drop Senator Iyorchia Ayu who, incidentally, has crowned him Nigeria’s Odinga.
“Only thereafter could he return to the drawing board and recalibrate his Economic Plan in line with what the new frontiers that Nigerians are yearning for.”