2023: Atiku opens up on ‘selling privatised enterprises’

Dino Melaye, the spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2023 election, has said that reports that his principal sold privatised enterprises are malicious.

What happened?: There have been speculations that Atiku sold off some national assets which were privatised to his cronies while he was Vice-President of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007.

Atiku had been challenged: The critics had challenged Atiku to account for the privatisation exercise under his watch “which saw national assets sold off to friends and cronies with no benefit to the country”.

Dino Melaye speaks for Atiku: But in a YouTube video shared on his known Twitter handle on Tuesday, August 16, 2022, Melaye described those peddling the rumours as “people of capricious manifestation”.

“The statistics given by one myopic character in a video that is going viral, are manufactured from Aba market. They are not factual at all,” Melaye said.

He said that all claims that Atiku used the privatization scheme to enrich himself are misinformants, tagging them as 'beer parlour discussions.'

Atiku's Argument: He recalled that current Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, was the Director General for the Bureau of Public Enterprise at the time,; hence should be blamed if public funds in the sector are reportedly missing.

He added that it is 'impossible' for privatized enterprises to perform below expectations.

He said that according to the BPE, 37% of all privatised firms are having challenges as of 2018. However, BPE also reported that 67% of 147 privatized companies in Nigeria are "doing well."

Melaye further recounted Atiku's efforts in revolutionizing the Telecom industry in 1998 and backwards.