From Public Service to Public Theft: The Dirty Secret Behind Nigeria’s 1,000 Useless Enterprises

 

Nigeria isn’t broke—it’s being bled dry by overfed government companies. Scrap the bureaucratic beasts, unleash private power, and watch the nation rise from parasitic failure to capitalist fire.

When I say that Nigeria’s more than 1,000 government-owned companies are fat, incompetent, and corrupt, I am not exaggerating. They are bloated monuments of failure, feeding off public funds while pretending to serve the people. Every one of them is a noisy machine that produces nothing but debt, excuses, and bureaucracy. It is time to slaughter the leviathan. We must scrap these government-owned dinosaurs and let private investors breathe life into what’s left of their carcasses.

From the days of independence, Nigeria’s rulers believed the government could run everything—banks, railways, refineries, cement factories, airlines, even hotels. It was the grand dream of economic self-reliance. But what we got instead were factories that never produced, trains that never ran, and workers who collected salaries for doing nothing. These enterprises became burial grounds for taxpayers’ money, with government officials treating them like personal fiefdoms. Over time, they became bureaucratic laundromats—perfect channels for laundering public funds under the perfume of “national service.”

Look closely, and you’ll see how deep the rot goes. Many of these enterprises have been running at a loss for decades, gulping billions of naira in subsidies and bailouts. They have become parasites—fat on failure and allergic to accountability. Each change in government brings a new wave of appointments, contracts, and corruption schemes dressed as “reform.” But nothing changes, because these institutions are not designed to succeed. They exist to feed politicians and their friends. It’s like pouring clean water into a leaking drum—it disappears, leaving only the noise of waste.

The Nigerian state is now running an empire of inefficiency. Power, oil, transport, aviation, agriculture—you name it, the government has dipped its hands in it, and the result is predictable. Everything government touches either dies slowly or collapses spectacularly. The Nigerian Railway Corporation can barely keep its tracks working. The Ajaokuta Steel Company is a museum of rusted ambition. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company, our so-called national pride, became a black hole for oil revenues. When thieves are rewarded and managers are replaced by middlemen, how can progress survive?

Some still believe these enterprises can be “reformed.” But how do you reform a system that is allergic to results? Every attempt to fix them has ended in the same ritual: committees are set up, consultants are paid, reports are filed—and the cycle of failure continues. Reforming these companies is like trying to wash a pig and expecting it to stay clean. The only solution is to privatize them completely—tear down the rotten structures and let private investors rebuild from the rubble.

We’ve seen the proof. When the telecommunications sector was privatized in 2001, Nigerians went from begging for NITEL phone lines to carrying multiple SIM cards. Private competition brought life, speed, and innovation. Imagine what could happen if the same energy was unleashed in power, transport, and oil. The difference between public failure and private success is simple: accountability. A businessman who invests his own money has a reason to perform. A bureaucrat spending taxpayers’ money only has excuses to invent.

The state has no business being a businessman. Yet Nigeria insists on running 1,000 companies as if the government were a profit-making corporation. That’s not governance—that’s gluttony. Every budget season, these enterprises come with outstretched hands, asking for more funds to feed their inefficiency. The money they waste could build schools, equip hospitals, and create real jobs. Instead, it disappears into bureaucratic quicksand, where nobody is punished and nobody is accountable. When a tree refuses to bear fruit, it must be cut down before it poisons the soil.

Of course, the call for privatization will spark fear. The unions will cry that jobs will be lost. The politicians will warn that the nation’s assets will be “sold to foreigners.” But what they truly fear is losing their playground of power and patronage. The truth is, these companies are not creating jobs—they are killing them. Every naira wasted on a dead enterprise is a job denied to a living entrepreneur. Every subsidy paid to keep a failed factory running is a lifeline stolen from the struggling small business owner who actually creates value.

Privatization, if done right, can be the oxygen Nigeria’s economy desperately needs. It can attract real investment, modern technology, and professional management. But it must be clean, transparent, and patriotic—not another bazaar for political cronies. We’ve been burned before by corrupt privatizations, where public wealth was sold for pennies to the connected few. That is not privatization—that’s plunder. What Nigeria needs now is a bold, transparent process that puts performance before politics.

Even in the power sector, where privatization stumbled, the lesson is not to abandon reform but to deepen it. The government still meddles too much, holding on to the transmission grid like a jealous lover who refuses to let go. Until private hands are allowed to manage the entire chain—from generation to distribution—Nigerians will remain in the dark, both literally and figuratively.

Let’s not pretend this transformation will be smooth. Breaking the grip of bureaucracy is like uprooting a stubborn weed; it will resist with all its strength. But if Nigeria wants to grow, it must be willing to bleed a little. Every great reform in history—whether Thatcher’s privatization of British industries or Deng Xiaoping’s market revolution in China—came with pain before prosperity. Nigeria cannot be the exception. He who fears the fire never eats roasted yam.

I have no illusions. Scrapping these 1,000 state giants will shake the political order. But what is the alternative? A nation perpetually trapped in economic paralysis, where progress is suffocated by corruption and incompetence? Enough is enough. The people deserve power that works, railways that run, and industries that produce—not excuses wrapped in bureaucracy.

Nigeria’s economy is not dying from lack of resources; it is dying from over-government. We have turned the state into a profitless conglomerate, a shareholder in failure. It is time to cut the cord. Let the private sector drive the nation forward, and let the government focus on what it was meant to do: regulate, not operate.

The real independence Nigeria needs today is economic. It will not come from oil, or aid, or empty speeches—it will come from freeing our economy from the chains of bloated government enterprises. Until we do, we will remain a nation that feeds the fat while starving the lean. And as long as the leviathan lives, Nigeria will crawl where it should fly.