A senior lecturer at the Nigerian Turkish Nile University (NTNU), Dr Chigozie Enwere, has critisised privatisation as a policy, saying that it was capable of destroying a state.
Enwere, who is the Head of Political Science Departments at the university, stated this during a symposium organised by the Ufuk Foundation, Turkish Review, Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution and the institution.
He said: “One of the factors that led to the fall of the Ottoman Empire was its drive to privatise everything belonging to the government.
“Today, we see this same drive in West Africa in general and in Nigeria in particular. There is the saying that government doesn’t have any business in business. This is wrong.”
He advised the federal government to desist from seeking foreign investment as means of developing the country, saying that no nation would develop another.
The Ottoman Empire was an empire founded by Oghuz Turks under Osman Bey in north-western Anatolia in 1299, and was one of the most powerful states in the world in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Another speaker at the event, themed “Experiences of West Africa & Turkey in Peace & Development”, Prof. Nuhu Yakub, urged the government to concentrate more on production than on commercialisation.