Abstract:
The research work is aimed at studying the problems of privatization of
Federal Parastatals with particular reference to NITEL and its subsidiary M-
Tel. Many African countries including Nigeria embarked upon the
establishment of Public Enterprises, managed and controlled by the
government of each country. However, the problems of insufficient
enterprise autonomy, defective capital structures resulting in heavy
dependence on the national treasury for operational purposes, and
economic depression of the nation, called for privatization of these public
enterprises as a measure of reform to avoid total collapse of the system
and grounding of the economy. Hence Privatization is a tool or reform for
economic management of modern industrial economy. The objective of the
study is to examine the reasons and basis for privatization, the effects, the
types and problems of privatization of federal parastatals in Nigeria. The
population of the study was made up of disengaged and retained staff of
both NITEL and M-Tel in Rivers and Enugu States respectively. The sample
size was determined using Yamani's formular and Chi-square for testing of
hypotheses. The survey research method was adopted in eliciting data
from respondents for this study. The major findings are that, privatization
exercises in Nigeria are prone to self inflicted complications, lack of
transparency due to corruption that has remained the Omnipresent
obstacle that erodes every exercise in Nigeria. In meeting the above
findings, the recommendations proposed for privatization exercise in
Nigeria are; The privatization exercise should ensure the evolution and
development of a near perfect policy, economic reformation and
restructuring of Nigeria's political economy. Finally, the federal government
should have a proper labour policy to resolve terminal benefits matters in
collective bargaining.
