Benjamin Ezra Dikki, the acting director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), has declared that for reforms to succeed in any country there must be a strong political will at the top.
Receiving a team from the World Bank led by the sector manager, finance and private sector development (Western & Central African countries), Paul Noumba, which was on a fact-finding visit on which government agency was the best to domicile the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) of the public/private partnership projects (PPPs) in Nigeria, Dikki noted that the present administration had shown strong political will in that direction.
According to a statement by Chigbo Anichebe, head, public communications, Dikki listed some of the reforms the present administration had given full backing to include the power privatisation, commercialisation of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), privatisation of the Abuja Securities & Commodities Exchange (ASCE) and the approval of eight reform bills by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) which are expected to be presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for onward transmission to the National Assembly.
The director general called for the domiciling of PIU in the Bureau as the law establishing BPE gives it the mandate to execute PPPs through concessioning/commercialisation. He added that the successful concessioning of the country’s 24 ports by the Bureau was a clear testimony of its capability to handle PPPs.
He said already the Bureau had made a presentation to its bosses on the need to domicile the PIU in the privatisation agency, the statement noted.
