Ben Bruce, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, has called for the outright privatisation of the national parks instead of commercialisation.
This was contained in a statement by the Head of Public Communications of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Alex Okoh, on Friday in Abuja.
The statement said Bruce made the call during an interactive session at the National Assembly with the management team of BPE, led by its Director-General, Benjamin Dikki.
Bruce said commercialisation of the national parks would not yield the desired results if the assets remained under government’s control.
He decried the decay in all the eight national parks across the country.
Bruce said that the current state of the parks had hindered many Nigerian children from seeing live wild animals.
“Many Nigerian children have never seen a live buffalo or elephant in our parks, whereas national parks are money spinners in other countries in the tourism value chain,” he said.
Bruce said the Senate was in support of the reform and privatisation programme and that his committee would work with the BPE provided the assets were handed over to qualified investors.
“Senate is in full support of the privatisation programme, but let us get the right people and the right investors with the requisite technical expertise to take over government assets,” Bruce said.
He applauded the BPE for the feat so far achieved and pledged the committee’s support in the discharge of its mandate.
Bruce said the committee was saddled with the responsibility of assisting the BPE to deliver on its mandate in order to move the nation forward.
He expressed the committee’s commitment to ensuring that the gains of privatisation went to the Nigerian citizens.
Bruce acknowledged the critical role the BPE would play in the policy direction of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
“I am sure that the BPE will not fail Nigerians given its track record of performance,” the statement quoted Bruce as saying.
He said the mandate of the committee was “to look at the privatised entities, their operations and current state of affairs as it affects their financial and corporate status”.
He added: “We shall look at these companies to see if they are delivering the goods in terms of efficiency, productivity, profitability, poverty reduction and all the supposed benefits that feature in privatisation advocacy.”
Bruce said to achieve the mandate, the committee had drawn up a work-plan which included interactive sessions with the BPE, the National Council on Privatisation, power, maritime and petrochemicals sectors.
He said the committee would give attention to the bills before the National Assembly and ensure their early passage to impact positively on the citizenry.
The statement said Dikki enumerated the reforms and other activities carried out by the BPE since its inception.
He said the power sector privatisation was already yielding positive results as power generation had moved from 2,000 megawatts to over 4,500 megawatts consistently.
Accordingly, the Distribution Companies had also increased their capacity to distribute power.
He said Transcorp Generating Company in Ughelli, Delta State had moved power generation from 150 megawatts at takeover to over 600 megawatts.
Dikki also recalled the positive developments in the telecommunications sector since the inception of the reforms.
He said with investment, competition and increasing number of lines, the cost of SIM Cards had crashed to zero.
Dikki said: “Nigerians will reap the benefit of power sector reform and privatisation as investments are made and quantum of power supply increased.
“Tariffs will definitely crash, Nigerians should be patient.”
NAN.