Privatization and deregulation, a panacea to Nigeria’s economic challenges?

Abstract

Privatization, according to the section 14 of the privatization and commercialization decree 1998 refers to relinquishing of parts or all of the equity and the other interests held by the Federal government. Deregulation entails the removal of rules or regulations to make the economy competitive and open up the market. Nigeria as a nation has adopted the policy over the years, which has resulted into both negative and positive socio-economic consequences. However, the policies have propelled economic development in some countries around the world, thus; this paper describe privatization and deregulation as a panacea to economic challenges if properly implemented in Nigeria. To this end, the paper gave a background to privatization and deregulation in Nigeria and gave a critical assessment of the policy in Nigeria, benefits and challenges. Neo-liberalism and elite theories were used as theoretical perspectives to explain the paper. It made use of secondary data to analyze the scope of the study. However, the paper called for the need for a comprehensive post privatization evaluation analysis for all the privatized organizations and deregulation reformsKeywords: Privatization, Deregulation, Commercialization