For many, privatisation and commercialisation is simply a massive fire sale of government assets by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and its implementation arm, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).

But on the scale of one to ten though, privatisation and commercialisation combined could only be ascribed about five points out of ten, while sector reforms alone would take the remaining five points and that’s a whopping 50 percent. But of course all that the public talk about is “how our collective assets are being disposed” by the BPE in particular

The point is often made that when you privatize, you sell only one enterprise, but when you reform you open up an entire sector thereby creating many more enterprises in the sector through the creation of enabling environment for private sector participation.

“The proposals will benefit overdraft and high-cost credit users, rebalancing in the favour of the customer ”

In 1999, Nigerian began a process of accelerated reform of the key sectors of the economy to align with its changing status from a military government to an emerging democracy. Political democracy without attendant economic democratisation cannot lead to growth of any society.