Thread by @DrOlusesan

When young Nigerians ply Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and feel perplexed at its terrible state, they may not know a govt between 1999-2007 had ample opportunity to fix it, but did not. The govt only prepared grounds for concession of d road to Bi-Courtney for N89.5Billion. #Atikulate

https://twitter.com/JeSuisNaija/status/1055372245466378240

Bi-Courtney was granted rights to resume toll collection on the busiest road in Africa for N25yrs! This was after the administration had abolished toll gates to justify fuel tax levy in 2004. Obasanjo hitherto dismissed d official N23Million made daily from toll gates as paltry.

All rolled into one, OBASANJO and ATIKU are the fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors of CRONY CAPITALISM in Nigeria. The duo cultivated, mechanized and irrigated the current ravaging extreme poverty in the land through "accumulation by dispossession." #Atikulate

@BBoason You should agree It’ll take a massive stroke of ingenuity to separate the “alleged corrupt practices” from “issues relating to government policies or actions where there is contemporaneously loose governance in an opaquely administered privatization program. #Atikulate

ATIKU remained the Chairman of the National Council on Privatization even when it was reconstituted by OBJ in 2004. ALSCON and other shady bid processes leading to Senate Hearing and cases determined at d level of the Supreme Court is no longer “allegation of corrupt practices.”

There’s no record to show ALSCON wasnt doing well when it was listed for sale. Contrary to public impression, illiquidity was d primary driver of Obasanjo's privatization, and not productivity. Twas suggested that Buhari should also sell FG’s stake in NLNG during 2016 recession.

@BBoason crux of my argument is “how Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world.” Every medicine is a potential poison. Privatization as a govt policy isn't bad. Howbeit, human poverty index doesnt look at numbers of govt businesses that are doing well after privatization.

Its pertinent to ask “what became of Nigerians affected by retrenchment when govt companies were sold” if unemployment is truly an indicator of poverty.
Aside economic theories in effect, which are debatable, no job loss is directly traceable to policy actions of Buhari’s govt.

This isn’t to say Buhari didnt perform below expectations. Nonetheless, it is contributory to anchor contemporary themes of our debate on what to do to address areas where things aren’t working under Buhari than to encourage public resentment instigated by those who sold Nigeria.

Of all animals created by God, it is only humans that are intuitive. ATIKU's show off about employing Nigerians is like an uncle that buys a child ice cream after selling the house his father starved d entire family to build. Intuitively, no human, that encumbered is trustworthy.

While ATIKU and OBJ battle for d souls of national assets, over 1000 companies that survived military era, that are at least 20yrs collapsed. Nothing compares to 2002-2007 layoffs. Dunlop left after Michelin, following a plunge into negative working capital of over N2billion.

NICHEMTEX, NIGERIA TEXTILE MILLS, FIVE STAR, DALTEX, ASWANI all died. The banking sector was the worst hit, where sacking was carried out on a massive scale - SGBN and Savannah bank? Again, Is there any economic catastrophic event today that compares to the stock market meltdown?

Right after OBJ-ATIKU’s banking recapitalization, till today, nobody has explained how most Nigerian bank stocks increased in value exponentially as they continued endless right issues and IPOs, with some stocks quadrupling in value in less than a year between 2004 and 2007.

Immediately the enfant terrible duo left and #Atikulated, from all-time high of N13.5 trillion market capitalization in March 2008, stock prices fell like a meteor to generate less than N4.6 trillion market capitalization by the second week of January 2009.

ATIKU must have assumed Nigerians who lost money in d stock market have recovered? Series of cataclysmic failures of his epoch in govt marked d origin of widening inequality and wage disparity. This is so as all govt bailout amounted to subsidizing failures of wealthy Nigerians.

In over 20yrs, the gap between capitalist rent/surplus and declining income of urban poor have continued to grow. Sadly, children of parents thrown out of jobs by ATIKU and OBJ are the ones eagerly adopting neoliberal distortions about our economic history.

OBJ once said openly that ATIKU will only become President over his dead body. It seems he is ready to die, if not, to the #atikulated you have a duty to kill him first, otherwise by God's grace you will watch Buhari beam his gap tooth at u with a clenched right fist, come 2019.