L
LequteMan
Guest
Nigeria's former Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman, has blamed former Military Head of State, the late Gen. Sani Abacha for the current challenges plaguing several sectors of the country.
“The biggest problem of this country is lack of continuity. What happened was that Abacha came and put a cutlass and just cut it off. The reforms of NEPA, the reforms of NNPC all these NITEL, Nigeria Airways, SwissAir had actually paid for it. By today, we would have had a national carrier. All these reforms that you are seeing would have been concluded long ago.
According to him, Abacha halted the privatization of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, after taking over power in 1993.
"NNPC, if you see the fight that we fought even with the Minister of Petroleum who was one of the most powerful ministers that were closest to Babangida. We insisted that the Minister of Petroleum should not be the chairman of NNPC and that was approved by the National Executive Council. So we removed him as the chairman of the NNPC because NNPC was to be restructured as a full commercial entity. But I was surprised that when I came back to government, the Minister of Petroleum had gone back to become the chairman of NNPC.”
He spoke at the inauguration of a study group on giving voice and voting power to retail shareholders in the country.
Vanguard
“The biggest problem of this country is lack of continuity. What happened was that Abacha came and put a cutlass and just cut it off. The reforms of NEPA, the reforms of NNPC all these NITEL, Nigeria Airways, SwissAir had actually paid for it. By today, we would have had a national carrier. All these reforms that you are seeing would have been concluded long ago.
According to him, Abacha halted the privatization of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, after taking over power in 1993.
"NNPC, if you see the fight that we fought even with the Minister of Petroleum who was one of the most powerful ministers that were closest to Babangida. We insisted that the Minister of Petroleum should not be the chairman of NNPC and that was approved by the National Executive Council. So we removed him as the chairman of the NNPC because NNPC was to be restructured as a full commercial entity. But I was surprised that when I came back to government, the Minister of Petroleum had gone back to become the chairman of NNPC.”
He spoke at the inauguration of a study group on giving voice and voting power to retail shareholders in the country.
Vanguard
