Privatisation and the Buhari era

ONE of President Buhari’s first unusual gestures after winning the 2015 Presidential election, even before he was sworn in as President, was to send a powerful delegation to lobby for Dr. Akinwumi Adesina as a potential President of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

The delegation, led by the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, visited several African countries to rally support for Dr. Adesina, culminating in a much-publicised meeting with Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa. Its mission was successful, having led to the emergence of Dr. Adesina as the President of the AfDB (a position he will formally assume on September 1, 2015) with President Buhari’s backing.

Invariably, the success of the delegation translates to Dr. Adesina having become the current President-in-waiting of the AfDB, thanks to his being eminently qualified and his having an impressive track record as Nigeria’s former Minister of Agriculture, and to the diplomatic forays of the delegation with President Buhari’s support, which itself reflects diplomatic ingenuity and foresight especially for a yet-to-be inaugurated head of government as he then was.

As reported in the story captioned “Outgoing Nigeria agric minister wins AfDB Presidency” published in The Guardian of May 29, 2015, incidentally the day of President Buhari’s inauguration, President Buhari had expressly “requested the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to support the candidacy of Adesina as the body’s president” and “had communicated his backing of Dr. Adesina’s candidacy to Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, the chairman of ECOWAS.”

It should be of interest to any analyst of this singular gesture of President Buhari that Dr. Adesina was a minister in the government of his predecessor, former President Goodluck Jonathan. And one would expect that, with the extreme bitterness that characterised the electioneering campaign between the two, President Buhari would have nothing to do with the government of the man he would be succeeding, that he would discard the baby with the bathwater of the former administration.

But in having not done so, as indicated by his support for Dr. Adesina, President Buhari has exhibited an admirable tendency to transcend pettiness and put merit and the nation’s interest above every other consideration. He has also suggested that he would have no problem adopting anything or anyone from the past, including the recent past of his predecessor’s administration, provided he finds merit and positive value in that thing and person and can utilize such to the greater good of Nigeria. This, in my view, is the hallmark of progressivism.

It cannot be gainsaid that one of the achievements that set the former Minister of Agriculture apart from his predecessors was the transformation during his tenure of Nigeria’s agricultural sector into an improved business-oriented sector, with a focus on higher productivity and profitability for farmers and the government.

Dr. Adesina can be said to have introduced semi-privatisation to the Nigerian agricultural sector, giving more autonomy to farmers to operate while providing them with government support to generate, manage, preserve, package and market their products for the local and international consumer. Abakaliki rice, hitherto disparaged as “local rice” got a facelift in respect of production and packaging that spiked sales, making it a competitive Nigerian product for local consumption and export in the league of imported rice from Thailand and other foreign countries.

However, it is pertinent to say that, having mounted the saddle proper, President Buhari must continue to cast a dispassionate eye at what exists from the past as a possible guide to what ought to be done now to secure a prosperous future for Nigeria under his government. And the successes of the privatisation programme supervised by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and its secretariat, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), readily comes to mind as one contemplates some new possibilities for far-reaching economic progress and improvement in the provision of the good life for Nigerians in the Buhari era.

As with agriculture where Dr. Adesina excelled, the past administration also focussed on power privatisation and achieved considerable success as reckoned by various local and international experts. For instance, while speaking at the Nigerian Power Sector Investors Conference held in Abuja on February 14, 2014, the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Transformation, Dr. Robert Ichord, noted that in his over 30 years’ experience in privatisation, Nigeria’s power sector reform and privatisation were the most wide-ranging and most transparent transaction in recent history.

Such a well-regarded process should be one of the babies the Buhari administration should give serious thought to retaining as it throws out the bathwater of the past. But it is clear that much work still needs to be done to move its transparency to such realms of productivity that will ensure affordable and reliable electricity for Nigerians at rates profitable to the power companies that emerged from the process, as envisioned by the power sector reform of which the privatisation exercise was an integral part.

The gradual improvement we have noticed in power supply nationwide since the commencement of the Buhari era suggests that that forward movement has commenced in earnest. It also reinforces one’s hope that there will be steady light for Nigerians even before the end of the tunnel.

•Ukpai wrote from Abakaliki.