When the Federal Government says it wants to sell some of its assets as a way of pulling the country out of the current recession, a reasonable thing to do would have been to demand a list of the assets it wants to sell to be able to do a good critique of why some of them cannot be sold. But not so in Nigeria where people first criticize an issue before proceeding to look for reasons to justify their criticism. This is where our Trade Unions are as guilty as charged. It gets nauseating each time we hear them speak in a tone that suggests that they only exist for strikes.
By Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan
We did not set out originally to do a memoriam on our late Uncle, Chief Justin Erimwinoghae Igbinedion, who passed on some 32 years ago.
Our Uncle was many things to many people: at the home front, he was fondly called Uncle JE. His political friends called him Okhuakhua (Harmattan); and to his political opponents, he was terror personified.
He impressed in us that people and governments must learn to use what they have to get what they want. Had he not passed on before the advent of modern governments, he would have been a good adviser in many respects.
Uncle JE was one politician who saw tomorrow. He was a frontline politician who contested many elections, winning some and losing others.
At that time, fund-raising for political campaigns was alien in the land. So, Uncle relied on the little funding that came from Ibadan to Action Group, AG, candidates and the lean resources he could scrape together on his own.
Before every election, Uncle sold virtually everything he had, including landed property and vehicles, with the hope of replacing them if he won.
On one occasion, he lost everything – two houses located in Benin City, a car and even the election! He was not deterred by the prospect of becoming a tenant and walking to meetings.
He rose very fast again when he became Chairman of the Education Committee in the defunct Benin Divisional Council, BDC, and from there, he took a shot at the chairmanship of the defunct Akugbe District Council and won.
He then came permanently out of that “recession” that had crept into his life.
And many decades after, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is faced with the daunting task of having to pull Nigeria out of a deep problem that the administration had no hands in creating.
The administration has done its homework and came up with a blue-print on how to solve the problem. The solution includes the fact that some non-performing assets should be sold to those who would put them to productive uses.
Now, most people, including those who caused the original mess, are saying a unanimous NO to the idea of selling our assets.
On most of these issues, people are not listening to other people’s views. They have their fixed positions and easily jump to the conclusion of “Here we stand” even without offering alternatives to the idea they are condemning.
When the Federal Government says it wants to sell some of its assets as a way of pulling the country out of the current recession, a reasonable thing to do would have been to demand a list of the assets it wants to sell to be able to do a good critique of why some of them cannot be sold.
But not so in Nigeria where people first criticize an issue before proceeding to look for reasons to justify their criticism.
This is where our Trade Unions are as guilty as charged. It gets nauseating each time we hear them speak in a tone that suggests that they only exist for strikes.
In this particular instance, their initial reaction has been to issue strike threats should the Federal Government derail; whereas their principal function should be on how to prevent government from derailing.
We have maintained elsewhere that the role of Trade Unions transcends the picket-lines. Even more important than organizing strikes, their functions include researching into strategies for avoiding strikes.
Trade Unions should be society’s watch-dogs, constantly keeping all institutions of government and the organized private sector on their toes.
By now, we should be looking at Labor’s blue-print for getting us out of the recession. Unions must be able to organize themselves into alternate governments.
On the other hand, Government cannot use recession as an excuse for selling off our blue chip investments and other viable assets. You really do not sell a chicken because it breeds too much. We also have no reason to keep retaining non-performing assets.
Labor Unions must know that it is not every sale of government asset that results in job losses in the long run. When people buy up non-performing assets, revamp them properly and put them to productive use, massive employment will take over the place previously occupied by empty idleness.
Government must quickly produce a list of the assets it wants to sell for public determination of the propriety or otherwise of individual sale.
Incidentally, we now have a listening government. For years, Nigerians cried out about the over-bloated Presidential Air Fleet, PAF, which has remained the largest in the entire world. No past administration ever listened to anyone’s cry.
So soon after coming to power, the Buhari-led Administration is now taking steps to deplete the PAF – two of the aircraft are up for sale and an undisclosed number is being deployed to the Nigeria Air Force.
As they say in local parlance, “Aeroplane no dey kill poor man”. This is very relevant to our current circumstance. It is an issue of class. The common Nigerian has no money to buy the assets.
He should not at the same time constitute himself into what the Binis call “Egui n’ Uselu n’ erizobo, eigie nogha re re” (A dog in the manger).
Since we cannot buy, we must refrain from launching vehement attacks on Nigerians who have the wherewithal to do so. They must be encouraged to buy.
We shall end this piece on a note of warning – let our present predicament not be a license to dispose of our viable assets.
All the same, those sprawling landed property dotting the entire landscape of Lagos, that are now homes to rats, rabbits and reptiles as well as those dilapidated steel industries that produce nothing – have no place in our inventory books.
Like Uncle JE, let Nigeria use what it has to get what it wants. This is an affirmative vote for the sale of our non-performing assets wherever they exist.
Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan is a public affairs analyst and Chairman, Board of Directors, Edo Broadcasting Service. He can be reached at: joligien@yahoo.com
