40 years after SAP: Experts, CSOs fault privatisation of Govt services

.Say Nigeria still chasing wrong cure

By Omeiza Ajayi

ABUJA: Forty years after the Federal Government embraced the International Monetary Fund IMF induced Structural Adjustment Programme SAP, leading economists, civil society leaders and development experts have faulted the continued wholesale privatisation of government services under the reform, insisting that the country is still chasing the wrong cure for its economic troubles.

The verdict was delivered on Thursday at a high-level conference on “Forty Years of Structural Adjustment Programme SAP in Nigeria: History, Impact and the Way Forward,” held in Abuja.

The brainstorming session was organised by the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development (Centre LSD) alongside ActionAid Nigeria, the Centre for Democracy and Development CDD, the Social Development Action Trust SDA-Trust, the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation FEF, the Centre for Information Technology and Development CITAD, and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre CISLAC.

Some of those who spoke at the event include the Founding Executive Director, African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development (Centre LSD), Dr Otive Igbuzor; Political economist, Professor Adebayo Olukoshi; lawyer and pro-democracy activist, Ayo Obe; Head of Programmes and Policy, ActionAid Nigeria, Celestine Okwudili Odo, who represented the Country Director, Andrew Mamedu; International development expert, Dr Hussaini Abdu; and Director, Centre for Development, CITAD, Dauda Garuba.

In his welcome address, Founding Executive Director of Centre LSD, Dr Otive Igbuzor, said the conference was convened to interrogate what SAP, introduced in July 1986 by the Ibrahim Babangida military administration, had actually achieved.

Igbuzor said 40 years after its introduction, “SAP has not achieved its objectives. The major thing it has done is that it has increased market economy in Nigeria.”

He argued that the experiences of other nations offered Nigeria a clear lesson, noting that “from history of other countries from the United States of America to the United Kingdom to Japan to Singapore to China to Rwanda, all these countries have shown that if you want to have development there must be state capacity, a developmental state that will steer the market and other forces.”

Igbuzor called for a fundamental rethink of strategy, stressing that “we need to rethink our policy to put industrialization at the forefront to ensure that agriculture is supported manufacturing is supported enabling environment electricity infrastructure is provided so that Nigeria can develop like other countries.”

Delivering the keynote address, political economist, Professor Adebayo Olukoshi, situated SAP within the broader Washington Consensus that shaped International Monetary Fund IMF and World Bank lending conditions across Africa in the 1980s.

He noted that Nigeria “continues to confront many of the structural challenges that SAP was intended to address—dependence on crude oil, weak industrialisation, unemployment, poverty, inequality, external vulnerability and fragile State institutions,” four decades after the reform began.

Olukoshi outlined eight lessons from the experience, chief among them that “markets and States are complements rather than substitutes,” and warned that “weak States cannot regulate markets effectively, cannot coordinate industrial transformation, cannot provide quality education, cannot build infrastructure, and cannot protect vulnerable citizens.”

He called for a new development paradigm anchored on a “democratic developmental State,” productive economic transformation, human capital investment, democratic governance and regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area AfCFTA.

Lawyer and pro-democracy activist Ayo Obe drew a direct line between SAP and the current administration’s economic policies, describing President Bola Tinubu’s reforms as another attempt at the same project.

Asked whether there was any semblance between the two, she said, “as far as I am concerned Tinubu’s reforms are another attempt to see whether we can do SAP but get it right if you look at the policies such as floating of the Naira, removal of subsidies those are core principles of SAP.”

She added that Nigeria had no choice but to work with its history, noting that “we have to start from where we are, where we have had 40 years of policies some of which have worked, some of which have not and we have to take what we have and go forward with that.”

Representing ActionAid Nigeria’s Country Director, Andrew Mamedu, the organisation’s Head of Programmes and Policy, Celestine Okwudili Odo, described SAP as simply “austerity”.

He said the policy’s emphasis on “cutting down on government spending, rolling back the state, prioritising businesses instead of humans” had left ordinary Nigerians exposed, recalling that after the 2023 fuel subsidy removal, “some families were saying that they can no longer even afford three square meals, while their children go to school without food.”

Odo questioned the celebration of macroeconomic stabilisation amid rising poverty, asking, “the economy is growing, GDP is growing but the real people who live within that economy are struggling to earn their living. So you question that pattern of growth.”

He rejected calls for a compromise with austerity, pointing to Europe and America as models where governments still fund social welfare, stating that “even in America, when you talk about agriculture we come to EU up to 35% on subsidies and all that so that will give us empirical evidence to question the essence of this.”

International development expert, Dr Hussaini Abdu argued that SAP was never a menu of policies to be selectively applied but an ideologically driven system rooted in the Washington Consensus that has persisted under different names since 1986.

He said the resulting over-reliance on private provision had steadily hollowed out public institutions, particularly in education and health, observing that “we have more private universities in Nigeria than we have public universities and we are fighting over one another to ensure that our children go to those schools.”

Abdu warned that governments pursuing market logic over public service obligations weaken the state itself, saying “market is about profits, governance is about service,” and that when the state overemphasises the market, “it weakens the state, the state becomes irresponsible, it becomes the least provider.”

Director of the Centre for Development, Dauda Garuba, likened Nigeria’s journey to a traveller who has taken a wrong path, adding that the lessons of the last forty years were unambiguous.

“If we need development, we just go back to democratic development of states and that is a state that will enable every individual to be part of its development.”

He rejected the notion that the failures of governance should lead to the state’s further withdrawal, asking pointedly, “if you are renouncing the government based on the fact that things are not functioning well, we can as well tell ourselves that even governance is not functioning well. Do we privatize governance so that the political class will go home and rest”?

According to him, the way forward requires Nigeria to “retrace our steps and take our country back to where we want it and that is giving the opportunity for the state to play a key role in the direction of things for our country.”

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