Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of Nigerian opposition party, PDP, has reiterated his commitment to privatise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) even if vested interests in the opaque state-owned oil company try to take his life.
“I swear, I will privatise NNPC even if they kill me,” Atiku said at meeting with business leaders, Wednesday.
President Muhammadu Buhari had promised to break up the NNPC in 2015 and when the oil company published its first accounts in a decade eight months after Buhari’s victory at the election, progress was being made under the former military dictator who oversaw the birth of NNPC in the 1970s.
It was a big step for an entity that had become notorious for inefficiency and mismanagement, however broader plans to unbundle the oil company and privatise a part of it has stalled.
Failure to privatise the state oil firm could prove a strong weapon to be used by Atiku against Buhari when both face-off at the Presidential debate this weekend.
Atiku also said he will reduce the size of the federal government completely if elected President at the February polls.
“I support restructuring and we will liberalize several sectors of the economy,” Atiku said.
