As President, I’ll Sell NNPC, Enrich My Friends –Atiku

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has reiterated his promise to selling the Nigeria’s major asset, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC to private investors and also enrich his friends if elected Nigeria’s leader on February 16, 2019. 

Atiku stated this Wednesday while addressing a business summit at the Eko Hotels & Suites, Lagos.

According to Atiku, who has been positioning himself as a champion of the private sector, “The long and short is that I am committed to privatizing NNPC. I said it. I swear. Even if they are going to kill me, I will do it. At the end of the day, privatizing NNPC is going to be to our own advantage because you are not going to lose anything,” he told the audience.

Atiku added; “I am also not going to enrich members of my family, but my friends. Are my friends not entitled to be enriched? As long as there is no element of corruption there. And there was none during our time, when we privatized the banks, when we privatized institutions of the private sector.

“I have not heard anybody coming to say either the president or myself, took money to do that.

“So the intention of deregulating the economy and giving the private sector the responsibility of driving the economy, of course is to bring about prosperity to members of the public.”

The PDP flag bearer also promised to reduce the size of the federal government, even though he was silent on the attendant job losses a move like that will inevitably throw up.

“As I have said openly, I’ll reduce the size of the federal government completely and make sure that I hand over responsibility to the various components—whether they are states, whether they are regions, whether they are zones, whatever people want to call them, that’s their own business,” he said.

Atiku was Nigeria’s Vice President from 1999 to 2007 under the then President Olusegun Obasanjo.

As the Vice President, he was the head of the Economic Council as well as chaired the Privatisation Council.

Atiku was to be later accused of crony capitalism as head of that Obasanjo-era privatization drive while in government.