The new strategic roadmap by the Federal Government through the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) to resuscitate ailing government-privatised enterprises across the country is a welcome development. According to the BPE, this move is in consonance with the ease-of-doing-business target of government as espoused in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP). The roadmap involves the inauguration of four technical working groups and is focused on privatised enterprises in four sectors namely, automobile, housing (bricks and clay), mines & steel and finally oil palm. It is hoped that the searchlight will in due course be beamed on other ailing privatised enterprises. This move by government will help to address some of the negative fallbacks of government previous privatisation programmes.

Nationally, lots of regrets have been expressed by many stakeholders on the way government enterprises were frittered away and sold out for next to nothing by previous administrations especially those of Ibrahim Babangida and Olusegun Obasanjo. There were lots of questions asked on the genuineness of the valuation of assets of these hitherto public enterprises. Questions have also been asked on the mode selection of bids for consideration and overall on the transparency of the entire privatisation process. Over the years after the privatisation process was completed, many of the newly privatised firms have barely been able to survive and have been tottering and finding it difficult to break-even in their operations. This thus tends to suggest that due diligence might not have been properly carried out on the bidders of these enterprises. The results being experienced today thus speak to the shoddy job that must have been carried out by the authorities, particularly the BPE which incidentally has been saddled with this new responsibility of working towards the revival of the ailing privatised enterprises.

This obvious failure in the privatisation programme must have led to the triggering of the BPE’s monitoring and evaluation activities which discovered that as many as 16 per cent of the privatised enterprises are non-performing. With the involvement of the National Council on Privatisation and the Senate Committee on Privatisation between 2018 and 2020, the need for a revisit of the aftermath of the erstwhile privatisation exercise was considered very necessary. The question to be asked here is why as many as 16 per cent of the privatised firms would have to be left to become ailing before a redress would have to be embarked upon. This is an indictment on the supervisory activities of the BPE on the performance of the privatised firms. It can be recalled that the last major privatisation exercise of the government took place under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration which left office as far back as 2007 and one wonders whether it should take as many as 15 years for government to begin to set up technical working groups to rescue ailing privatised firms. Why were they left for so long to become distressed or non-performing before help was proposed to be rendered? Nonetheless, effort should be made to identify the core causes of the non-performance of these enterprises.

It is instructive to note that in addressing the challenges, the terms of reference of the technical working groups are to conduct diagnostic studies on the enterprises both operationally and finally as well evaluate the conditions of the firms in terms of ownership, share structure and capacity utilisation. This may be at the heart of the problems plaguing these ailing enterprises. Globally, the structure of shareholding in a firm is a key determinant of the firm’s performance as it involves the entrenchment of a cordial relationship between the board and management in the enhancement of shareholders’ value. In addition, technical working groups are also required to prepare business plans for the enterprises, develop a comprehensive five-year (2023-2027) turnaround programme for each firm as well as review and advise the Federal Government on the processes and implementation of the turnaround programme in addition to determining the potential and economic viability of the sectors, among others.

These plans are good on paper but the poser is whether the technical working groups can deliver as expected and if they do, whether the government through the BPE can affect the necessary changes required to bring life back to the enterprises. The current non-performance status of these enterprises is what have cast doubts on many Nigerians on the usefulness or not of government privatisation programmes. More often than not, in Nigeria and even globally, privatisation programmes are often compromised with the men in power using it to transfer inequitably, public assets or enterprises to themselves which ultimately they find it difficult to run them. Privatisation programmes can succeed provided transparency and due diligence is carried out throughout the process. The lessons to be learnt from this investigation exercise should be useful in planning any future privatisation programme in the country. Nigeria needs functioning enterprises, whether publicly or privately owned. Ultimately the focus should be on the enhancement of the living standards of the generality of the Nigerian people.