|
BNW |
|
B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Akinyemi counsels on FG's liberalisation policy
THE liberalisation and privatisation programme of the Federal Government would only succeed, if it marries it with a vigorous pursuit of well packaged social welfare policy, as the state of the development of the society cannot endure undiluted effects of pure market forces.
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, argued that this had become a common practice in most advanced democracies of the world that have adopted extensive government-funded social welfare programmes, in such key areas as education, health, housing and social security.
Speaking at the launching of a book: "Nigeria, Set Aside By God for Greatness: The Untold Story of June 12 Annulment", written by Adesina Adedipe, noted that it was in tandem with this that Nigeria pursued social welfare programmes until the era of privatisation in the 1980s. He stressed however that by the mid-70s, it had become evident that government ownership of the commanding heights of the economy was not yielding the desired results.
Said he: "I served on the Aminu Saleh Committee to draw up a defence policy for Nigeria. The committee sat from 1980 to 1983. It was made up of very senior military officers, one of whom later ended up becoming a military Head of State. The consensus with the committee was for government to divest itself from over-exposure in the ownership and management of businesses and industries.
"We concluded that liberalisation and privatisation were urgently needed. But we did emphasise the need for the government to continue to vigorously pursue its social welfare programmes as the state of the development of the society could not possibly endure undiluted effects of pure market forces."
While identifying reasons for the slow and tardy adoption of the liberalisation policy, Akinyemi noted that there were various ways to checkmate seeming confusing situation.
He said: "Firstly, there must be policies to ensure massive employment. This does not necessarily involve a bloated civil or public service. What it involves is a miniaturised public works system. Our roads and byways, whether inter-state, urban, or rural need repairs, maintenance and beautification. While the major repairs could be assigned to the major construction companies, maintenance and beautification should be assigned to small road maintenance companies. The country does not need machine-intensive construction contracts in all areas at this time. What we need are labour intensive contracts."
Besides, he said that the government should endeavour to revisit the issue of subsidy to cushion effect of liberalisation. He argued that there was still a regime of subsidy on petroleum products following the spate of imported landing costs.
He said given the fact that Nigeria does not have a social security system in place and in view of the fact that the price of petroleum affects everything, the constant gradual withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products has had a devastating negative impact on the standard of living of Nigerians.
Akinyemi added: "Government should also enter into dialogue with the private sector to design an employment package where manufacturers and service providers who employ more than 10 will double the employment at Federal Government expense for a two-year period which may be regarded as a period of industrial attachment. The products of this programme will benefit from the small and medium scale industrial fund which is presently under-utilised in the banks."
|
|
||||||||||||
