Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said the ongoing privatization programme is increasingly unfolding a different President Olusegun Obasanjo from the nationalist Obasanjo they knew before he became president.

NLC advised Nigerians to take solace from the fact that power is transient and that all the vital national assets and national heritage that government is auctioning out to the detriment of the nation will be reversed over time since they are being sold against national interest and against the law of the land.

General secretary of NLC, Comrade John Odah told Vanguard weekend in Lagos that the insistence on privatization of the National Security, Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) and others in spite of the law that said exactly opposite had given credence that those in government today were sadly carrying out personal agenda outside the people’s mandate.

His words: “President Obasanjo was voted into power by Nigerians on the strength that they thought he was still a nationalist. For example, when we had a presidential parley and he came to address us (labour), he made the point that the wholesome privatization of national assets and resources was not just and that it had to stop. That is why people are now worried that three years after, President Obasanjo as far as privatization is concerned is no longer the patriotic Obasanjo they knew. He has so much reversed himself dramatically that he is going outside the privatization law to privatize even those things that were not slated for privatization.”

“The fact that the government is not even prepared to have the law reviewed by the National Assembly has worsened the whole situation. The law says the mint, ports and similar vital national assets should be commercialized and not privatized. This action is a pointer that our trade policy, economic policy and everything is being pushed by forces outside the shores of this country and government.”

According to the general secretary: “The realities on ground unfortunately are that our economic policies are being manipulated and directed by the World Bank and IMF. These are institutions that have maintained the ideological position that the government does not have and should not have any hand in a number of enterprises which right now it is privatizing. But the reality of our situation as a country is such that we need more governmental intervention in the economy if it will ever take root.”

“That is why it is most sad and indeed unfortunate that the vice-president [Atiku Abubakar] last Thursday [18 July] in Lagos said nothing would stop government planned privatization of the mint, in spite of the overwhelming calls from all the informed shades of public opinions that the question of privatizing the National Security, Printing and Minting Company should be aborted.”

Vanguard (Lagos), July 22, 2002