Abstract:
Upon the attainment of independence in late fifties and early sixties, many African countries namely Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia and a host of others embarked upon the establishment of public enterprises managed and controlled by the government of each country. This might be as a result of lack of foreign investment in the areas of infrastructural facilities such as water, power, communication, roads etc. that could make life meaningful to the citizenry. This also could be linked with the collapse of private sector enterprises in the western Europe that emanated from the economic depression of late 1930s and the outlaw of private enterprises by the USSR which later spread across the globe. The problems of conflict of objectives insufficient enterprise autonomy, defective capital structures resulting in heavy dependence on the national treasury for operational purposes, mismanagement of funds and operations and bureactic rather than commercial management style called for privatization of these public utilities to avoid total collapse of the system and the grounding of the economy. Privatization is a tool for economic management of modern industrial economy. It refers to transferring of ownership, management and or control of business enterprises from the public sector to the private sector. The objective of the study is to examine the reasons and basis for privatization and challenges in Nigeria.
The survey research method using questionnaires was adopted in eliciting data from respondents for this study.
