A former political adviser to ex-President Shehu Shagari, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai and founding member of Arewa Consultative Forum has said that the proposal to sell some of the country’s national assets to remedy the current economic recession could amount to economic suicide.
Yakasai who spoke at his Kano residence when Senator Shehu Sani paid him a courtesy visit, said that previous experiences on the sale of national assets had clearly indicated that it was not the solution to the present economic predicament.
He said, “This is a wrong approach. All of us have a family. If you were giving N100 to your wife to cook for you and it is what you could afford, then all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation that you could no longer afford N100, it is not a solution for you to begin to sell your furniture and your dresses to maintain your N100 meal, because those items will one day be all sold off.”
He said Nigeria applied similar method before and it failed. “The British left us with the Nigeria National Shipping Line, Nigeria Airways. They left us investment in banks, investments in NITEL and the rest of them. Our military rulers decided to sell our assets,” he said, adding that during the Olusegun Obasanjo regime, he sold NICON, legislative quarters, federal secretariats, federal government houses, ministers quarters, fertilizer companies, and so on, with a view to improving the economy but that such did not solve Nigeria’s problems.
He asked President Muhammadu Buahri to, in his determination for solutions, borrow a leaf from the United States of America where President Barak Obama inherited a similarly tough economic situation.
Speaking earlier, Senator Shehu Sani representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, expressed the regret that Nigeria had depended on oil and had not been prudent at it for too long.
“It is disgraceful that our political ruling elite over the years have not been able to save for the rainy day,” Shehu Sani said.
Speaking in Kaduna also on sale of national assets, a NEC member of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Issa Aremu has cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari against going into the sale of national assets, saying the president should not sell the country.
Aremu said in a statement yesterday that Nigeria was not short of resources.
“At 50 dollars per barrel of crude oil, Nigeria is still a rich country but the country is sadly made impoverished by miserable leaders whose business as usual governance life styles include scandalous budget padding, illegal double prohibitive pension compensation for increasing army of two term governors, sheer theft of public funds officially put at trillions of Naira and lack of authentic vision of building the wealth of the nation,” Aremu said.
The labour leader said Nigeria would further slide into underdevelopment if Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Company, “which paid the sum of $1.289 billion as dividends for 2013, is sold to the highest bidder for another easy money to for business as usual governance.”