Nice as it all sounds so within reach, so modern, so blissful, so very efficient and so scornfully referred to as the organized private sector , since its inception.

Nigerians still have a bad feeling about the privatization demon that seems to have possessed the Obasanjo administration and consequently the part of our politico-economic sphere these days snidely likely to rise out of. The story is set to have a happily ever after, fairy tail endings or so we are made to believe, and if we don t, that makes us a bunch of uncivilized, uncivilizable, unprogressive and ungovernable group of people.

So Andrew came back, after checking out all of a decade and a half ago, on a foreign airline, of course (he had to suffer the consequences of checking out when his country needed him the most, and someone had to benefit. That person or entity was, naturally, the foreign one, and this is not exactly besides the point) looking at least two decades younger and bursting at the seams with optimism. He had learnt of the present administration s plans and struggles to deregulate NEPA, NITEL, NPA and Lord knows what else, and he had promptly packed up his bags and come home to constant electricity, gas, and water supply where ever he chooses to settle down in the country.

Andrew s optimism is indeed touching, and the fact that he reached home at the first whiff of privatization might not necessarily mean that he had little of any importance to preoccupy him where ever on the globe he checked out to. It might simply mean that he has managed to develop a deep seated trust in the capabilities and intentions of the Obasanjo administration which is, unfortunately, not shared by the vast majority of Nigerians, or even world citizens.

Does that then suggest we ought to pack up the whole deregulation idea and go on as we have all these years? By no means.

If nothing else does, the simplicity of logic makes it crystal clear that government (civilian, democratic, uniformed presidential, hard core military, whatever) who have held the reins of these institutions all these years, is simply incapable of running these institutions which are supposed to give our economy any sort of meaning at all. NITEl for instance has only, in the thirty or so years of its existence, been able to provide 450,000 lines across the country while in six months, the two GSM operators have, despite their cut throat rates, provided for over half a million people across the country a means of reliable, (if filthily expensive) means of telecommunications for the first time ever in their experience. If out of shame alone, NITEL should not be privatized. It should announce auction days to rid itself of the innumerable air conditioners, desks, chairs, buildings, vehicles, stationery or whatever telecommunication equipment it might boast of. The whole entity should be scrapped, and it should consider its suicide the greatest favour it has ever done this nation. The same goes for NEPA.

It is reasonable to assert that privatization is not something simply to be rammed down our long-suffering throats. It is and it doesn t need any spark of brilliance to figure this out to all intents and purposes the one and only alternative left.

It becomes therefore necessary to critically re-examine our priorities where the exercise is concerned in order to gain the confidence of the people and in order to assure the full purposes for which it is being carried out.

The reasons the former is lacking are not far fetched. From all indications, the privatization plans and procedures of this administration appears to be geared towards the new world trend of globalization a trend which has been generally rejected by consumers worldwide rather than towards providing for a long depressed people the things that only make life simple but possible at all in almost any other parts of the world.

The crash of the Dot Com phenomenon which was inevitable anyway, the terrorism attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11 and other recent events have suddenly brought to the fore the fact which had always existed but had been deliberately ignored, that the apparent greed and manipulations of the so called multinationals was going to get nobody nowhere, despite sugar-coated tongues.

The multinationals the world over operate a free market capitalist economy.

Unfortunately, capitalism appears to be the operative word for the obvious reason that there is absolutely no point in a market being free when the majority of the society is excluded from participation in it for one reason or another.

The shock of the GSM monopoly in Nigeria has proven beyond reasonable doubt that a free market does not necessarily put the populace first and will not necessarily drive prices down. On the contrary, the reason there has been such an outcry the world over against the so called globalization is the fact that while the multinationals are pretending to be doing us a big favour funding events, the truth is that they are nothing without the consumers. What is more, the big multinationals, far from helping solve our unemployment problems, simply take advantage of it as well as our exploding population by hiring a few hands who are so happy to be earning a tenth of what his contemporaries in the more developed countries are earning that they are ready to do ten times as much work. The multinationals then produce their goods which really have no competition and which, naturally, reflects in their prices while putting peanuts back in the system. The multinationals in Nigeria have, in the many decades, made little difference to the quality of their products and, for that matter, their sales strategy, simply because there has been no need for it.

It does not mean Nigeria should isolate herself from the rest of the world and refuse to participate in world trade. In actual fact, it is impossible, since most of Nigeria s Gross National Product comes from the sale of crude oil outside of the country. It just means that the multinationals ought to be forced to participate responsibly in the process of liberalization not necessarily for the purposes of profit, and there has to be some institutions to enforce them. For us, this institution has to be the government.