Remember how they want Nigeria to sell her assets? It started on September 17th with billionaire, Aliko Dangote saying it is what he would have done if his company ever went broke. According to him: “If I had challenges in my company, I would not hesitate to sell assets to remain afloat to get to the better times because it doesn’t make any sense for me to keep any assets and then suffocate the whole organisation.”

The Presidency has refused to come out clean to let us know what it really thinks or plans to do, although there have been speculations. But not the case for many politicians who have lent their voices in support of the sale. Some even mentioned the particular assets they’d like to buy they want to see sold.

The greatest arguments though have been against the sale though. It was former CBN governor, Charles Soludo, who argued that sale of national assets should be a last resort option to ending the recession. That even if we had tried and failed other means, the country would still lack the institutional infrastructure to carry out effective sales. Senior Advocate, Femi Falana, spoke to the illegality of the proposed sale when he warned that selling national assets will contravene Section 16 of the Constitution.

This is Nigeria though, and you can be sure that the only time you can glean our democracy is when the majority wins. At being wrong.

So here, we put together a list of all the people who have supported the asset sale to date. You know, just in case it’s followed through, goes awry and we finally need people to throw turned food at.

Aliko Dangote who led the pack here.

Senate President, Bukola Saraki welcomed the 8th Assembly back with his own suggestion here.

Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi shocked us again with his ability to not say what everyone expects when he included the sale of national assets as one of our options out of the recession. According to him, an option is to “sell down some refineries in a manner that does not hurt your strategic interest; sell down some oil assets; sell down some refineries in a transparent manner that gives you value. You can also have options to buy them back later. You should expect basically forex.”

The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele too. While dating the suggestion back to 2015, he said “in the short run, we can sell assets”.

The National Economic Council also supports the sale. But since we need individuals to hold to account, we will pin this one on Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Minister Udo Udoma. After the last NEC  meeting we learnt that the Vice President, on the suggestion of Mr. Udoma, now backs asset sale.

Finally, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has also spoken out in support of the sale. He even gave exact amount of shares to be sold.

So there you have it. It’s not clear yet what will be done to these people who the future may find guilty of leading us astray but dare we suggest public egging?

P.S: See why we didn’t add sale supporter, Mrs. Adeosun a la Finance Ministry here.

Roqeebah

Creative mind. Enthusiast. Learner. Multipotentialite. And here, an assistant editor.