Hauwa Ali
Nigeria’s former vice president and presidential flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), AtikuAbubakar has disclosed that he will concession ports, railways highways and other capital projects to private firms to unburden the federal government of elected as president of the country.
Atiku said this on Wednesday during a meeting with the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Lagos State.
According to him, the capital projects require a humongous amount, which there federal government does not have.
He said that concessioning the projects to private companies will bring about development, job and prosperity.
“If you see the amount of work the government has to do in this country, like building and rebuilding our ports, constructing our railway lines, building our highways – let me borrow Dokpesi’s word – it is a ‘humongous’ amount of money that you require. You know that the government doesn’t have it,” he said.
“I would rather concession most of this to the private sector and give them tax breaks. They invest, recover their money and we will have development, progress, jobs, and prosperity.”
Atikufurther expressed his support for restructuring the economy of the country which he said he has championed for some time.
“Thirdly, I moved to the issue of the economy. It’s only when you have a united country when you have peace that you begin to think about the economy and the economy is such a vast area – youth unemployment, inflation, so many things under the economy,” he said.
“Anybody who has followed my political career will know that I had started advocating for restructuring since we were in office, when it was very unpopular, particularly in my own constituency in the northern part of this country.
“I still went ahead because it is something that I believe will bring more unity to this country and give every part of this country the opportunity to develop at its pace and with its own resources.
“Then I moved on to the issue of education because it is too dear to my mind. I believe in education; it is so important in all our human endeavour. All these things we are talking about, we will not be able to achieve them without education. Basically, education should be number one,” Atiku added.