Wednesday, February 20, 2019 10:32 pm
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party on Wednesday in Kaduna reiterated his plan to privatise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC),
However, he no longer said he would sell to his friends. Abubakar spoke at a town hall meeting with ward, local government and state party leaders in the state at the Kaduna Trade Fair Complex.
He said that the NNPC had failed to serve the purpose for which it was established in 1977. According to him, selling-off the Corporation and all the three refineries is the best option for the country, likening it to the sale of Nigerian Telecommunication Limited (NITEL).
Abubakar said Nigeria is among the biggest producers of crude, but lamented that the country still imports refined products for local consumption at exorbitant prices to the detriment of the common man. He said, if elected President, he would deregulate the NNPC and sell it to Nigerians. the way Obasanjo sold NITEL.
However, he forgot to mention that the sale of NITEL was disastrously done by the administration, of which he was a part and chairman of Bureau of Public Enterprises, which handled the sale.
Under Obasanjo, NITEL went through several botched sales and management turnaround contracts. First, 51 per cent of the shares was sold to a group of investors under the trading name of Investors International London limited.
The sale was cancelled after the investors failed
This failed again, leading the government to sell
He said
He said that his leadership would address, what he described as alarming insecurity, with killings of innocent Nigerians across all the geopolitical regions. Abubakar appealed to the electorate to vote the PDP into political offices in the state for the betterment of the people. He said he would allocate more resources to the states and local government areas for faster development across the country.
The National Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, urged the Kaduna State Party leaders to work tirelessly to ensure the success
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