The Ethics of Government Privatisation in Nigeria

This paper seeks to determine whether or not the divesture of Nigeria’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) is ethical. Towards this end, it employs an analytic methodology to undertake a conceptual examination of the divesture of Nigeria’s SOEs by the FGN. The paper’s findings are: (1) A large proportion of the Nigerian citizenry is opposed to its government’s privatization policy. (2) A conducive socio-economic environment for privatization is lacking in Nigeria. The paper concludes that although privatization in general may be a “good” policy, it is ethically wrong for the FGN to privatize some (and perhaps most) of its SOEs, given the absence of a conducive socio-economic milieu. Key Words. Privatization, Nigeria, ethics, public enterprises, economic efficiency, socio-economic environment Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK) New Series, Vol.3 No.1, June 2011, pp.87-112