ASSESSMENT OF PRIVATIZATION POLICY OF PUBLIC COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

PREFACE
        The basic objective of this study was the effectiveness of privatization on the economic growth of Nigeria.
        This study is structured into five chapters for easy reading and comprehension.
        Chapter one dealt with the background of the prevailing circumstances in the economy that necessitated the introduction of the programme.
        From this, other chapters derived their base in order to confirm their findings, recommendation and conclusions.
        Through the country have benefited from this programme, certain problems were encountered, they includes, valuation of the enterprises to be privatized under developed infrastructural facilities.
        In view of findings above, recommendations have been made to help consolidate the government efforts in the privatization exercise.
ABSTRACT
        This write up is of the opinion that government owned companies in Nigeria has become burden to the government.
        They depend solely on the government for subventions or grants privatization as one instrument of SAP will be used to achieve economic efficiency in Nigeria.
        The aim of the study is to find out why government owned companies and parastatals that were initially established along commercial lines not only that they enjoy high subventions from the body that set them up and have performed below their counterparts in the private sector.
        The research work is based on both primary and secondary data. The data is the administration of questionnaires, journals, newspapers and books. The statistical tools used in testing the hypothesis is chi-square.
        It is the belief of the researcher that the findings and recommendation would be of invaluable help to the government owned enterprises which constitute most part of the public sector of the economy. The research study made some intershaped findings which revealed through analysis of data randomly administered to both public and private enterprises in Enugu State.
        It is recommended as a result of this research that there should be modalities for debt equity swap. This will bring managerial skill as well as new capital facilities. Also foreign investors should be encourage to invest in Nigeria when the government has created a conducive investment atmosphere for them to operate. Finally the attraction of technical and administrative known how that may be available in our country.
        In country, if all these are achieved, Nigeria will move towards economic development.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
    Background of the Study
    Statement of the Study
    Objectives of the Study
    Research Questions
    Significance of the Study
    Scope and Limitation of the Study
    Definition of Terms
References
CHAPTER TWO
    Review of Related
    Definition of Privatization
    Conditionalities Necessary for Privatization
    Diverse view to the Privatization Policy and Precautionary measures
    Programmes and Policy implementation of privatization
    Reasons for Privatization
    Contracts on Privatization as policy measure
References
CHAPTER THREE
    Research Design and Methodology
    Sources of Data
    Location of Data
    Method of Investigation
    Sample Size
    Methods of Presentation of Data
References
CHAPTER FOUR
    Data Presentation and Analysis
    Analysis of Questionnaire
CHAPTER FIVE
   BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Nigeria as one of the developing countries tagged third world countries. It was the opinion of the concerned nationalist that it would almost be very dangerous and unrealistic of the independence to allow that task of national development in the hands of private individuals. For this reason the government had established government owned corporations and parastatals to help it plan, guide regulate, direct and control the economy and the pace at national development.
However, in contrast to the great expectation of the government, that sum to the setting up of those enterprises have not been something to write home about.
Those corporations show a lot of demoralizing effects all those things includes; beings unable to give account of capitals invested in the firm, low quality of services should, insecurity of job facing workers etc.
The highest of it all is their inability to give account of money allocated to them by government. A few of them stand out like, the Nigeria coat corporation, the Nigeria Airways, Nigerian Telecommunication (NITEL), National Fertilize Company (NAFCON) Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the National Electric Power Authority. Among all these parastatals, the services of the hast establishment (NEPA) has been painful to the consumers to the extent that they have customarized it never expect power always. These are common examples cited by those who point out the inefficiencies that are warrant in the government owned enterprises been privatized.
The governments concern about the poor performance of its corporations and parastatals become a major factor until when the second wave of oil guide hit the world Nigeria’s oil began a dangerous effects.
In 1981, the President Alhaji Shehu Shagari set up another commission on parastatals to study their operational problems and recommend how these can be solved to help them provide efficient services for which they were established. The commission recommended that commercially oriented parastatals should be solved to subject themselves to their discipline.
It observed that many of the problems which seem internal to parastatals were deny from the realities of the socio-social and socio-political environment in which they operate and to propose only reform internal to the parastatals or in their getting parastatals to satisfy public expectation is simply to ignore significant roles expected in order to interpret this, the commission recommended privatization of some government owned enterprises.
It was evident that the problems of government owned enterprises and how to  handle them had taken the center stage in the country’s attempt to revamp the economy. It did not take too long he was overthrown. The former first head of state from 1984 to 1985 Muhumedu Buhari appointed a study group on statutory corporation and parastatals to review the financing, profitability and performance records of state ventures. The group has Ali-Al-Makin (then managing director and Chief executives of the Bank of the North Plc). As the head, this group was charged with the responsibility of identifying the major problems of these enterprises as vague and conflicting objectives inadequate autonomy, inflexibility in decision making process, inappropriate capital structure, under-utilization of assets, absence of good credit control system and inability to collect debts, lack of adequate cost control measure, ineffective and inefficient management on formation and accounting system, absence of financial and operational performance recommendations as a possible solutions to or act at least as of those problems is selective privatization.
Inspite of the huge amount of money, pumped into such enterprises, they have failed to achieve the minimum level of efficiency that was expected of them.
In 1986, National Annual Budget speech, the then president Ibrahim Babagida put the issue clear that public corporation have been constitute and unnecessarily high burden on government.
The current financial constraints of the government have worsened their problems, thus something have to be done to come as a reasonable solution or the accumulated losses that the parastatals contributed to the economy.
And so, purely on the grounds of promotion, it becomes necessary for government to take a hard to these parastatals and that was why it decided that some measures should be taken this privatization.
1.2    STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
        It is widely felt that the provision of individual commercial activities is most efficiently left in the hands of the private sector to manage them.
        This is because of the loss of confidence on the public corporation by the public due to the poor services and an unnecessary bureaucratic process inefficient and poor respond to the users request by the public companies, even when the public sector could cope with some of these issues mentioned, they doesn’t sector operate with their magic services.
        Another problem associated with public sector in Nigeria is that they have failed to fulfill the to the various levels of government that owns them, this was significantly noticed where the public companies cannot at least generate the capital invested into them by government thereby relying on government for financing.
        For this reasons, government decided to relinquish some of her problems into the hands of private individual which is privatization of her companies.
        The problem to research for to assess the impact of privatization of public companies in Nigeria.
 1.3    OBJECTIVE OF THE  STUDY
        The issue of privatization has been a topical matter in Nigeria economic activities and policy making. Therefore, the objectives of this research project are as follows:
    To ascertain whether this privatization policy, is justifiable or not as regards growing, economy in Nigeria.
    To ascertain the effectiveness of privatization of public enterprises in broading the ownership best of public companies.
    To appraise the effect of privatization employment.
    To find out the ways and means to increase the participation of Nigerian citizens in economic activitiesthrough purchasing of shares from the companies which is considered as productive investment.
 1.4    RESEARCH QUESTIONS
        This research question is mapped out to enable the researcher assess the impacts of privatization of government owned companies in the economy. Some of these questions are:
    To what extent would this privatization contribute in other to boast the economic growth of the Nigeria?
    To what extent did private companies has an edge over public corporation?
    What would be the effect on the general public inorder to cope with the situation?
1.5    SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
        The mission of this research study is to analyse the product validity of public corporation and process of curtailing government ownership and management of enterprises and enlargement of private sector participation in state ownership of firms and assets the are controlled and owned by the government.
        It is seen that by privatization the state is seeking to reduce the size of the public sector, especially where the enterprises have continued in engaging in activities which private firms could carry out efficiently.
        The usefulness of that research work is to state the advantages which privatization has over the government ownership of enterprises and its impact in the economy.
1.6    SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
        This study dealt with the extent to which privatization will help in alleviating the problems of the government owned enterprises as envisaged in the Nigeria.
        The aforementioned statement means how for privatization as a policy measure of the government could be more desirable than total government involvement in the organization and management of the public enterprises.
        This study embraces the enterprise to be fully privatized, these parastatals such as hotels, poultry, farms, insurance companies and wood industries, on the other hand are industries which are to be partially privatized, these include: Banks, steels rolling mills and media organization.
        The study as regards to ascertaining enterprises meant a Technical Committee on Privatization and Commercialization (T.C. P.C). This committee was established by the government. However, because of the unequal distribution of industries in the country.
The privatization policy which is a national policy would be treated as a country wide event.
The limitations encountered during the study include.
        No-Return there was the problem of not collecting all the questionnaires that were needed.
        Finance – The availability of money posed problem to the researcher.
        Time – The time available for the study was short.
 1.7    DEFINITION OF TERMS
PROGMATISM: Based on the belief or theory of the thing which
depends on practical bearing  upon human interest.
PREDICTIVE: (To tell in advance). To say or determine the effect
which the curtailing of government ownership and management of enterprises time on the economy in future.
RELINGQUISH: To give up government shares in public enterprises.
ENTERPRISES: One or more firms under common ownership in the
companies. A term used in ceasing production to distinguish the reporting unit from the firm or unit of control.
VALIDITY: This is the state of ensuring effectiveness because is doen
with correct formalities.

REFERENCES
 KOMULAFE K.(1991) “Complex Privatization” Guardian, Lagos,
January 21, p. 18.
(1993): “The case against Privatization” National Concord Ikeja,
January 5, .2
OLUGBADE B.N. (1994): “An Equitation society via Privatization
National Concord Ikeya, January 5, p. 2.
SANYA O. (1994) “Privatization and Commercialization”. Vanguard,
Lagos p.15
(2003) “Privatization and Commercialization This Day, Lagos, March
24, p8.