WHO OWNS THE NATION’S WEALTH?

The purpose of economic policy is to build a capable, prosperous and secure society, argues K. BOLANLE ATI-JOHN Something troubling is stirring across the world. In the United States, Donald Trump’s return to power reflects, among other forces, economic insecurity, immigration anxieties and declining confidence in established institutions. In France, protests against austerity and rising living costs have challenged successive governments. Indonesia’s 2025 demonstrations exposed public anger over political privilege and inequality. Across parts of Europe, economic uncertainty has accompanied the resurgence of nationalism and populism. Closer to home, South Africa offers a particularly disturbing warning. Persistent unemployment, inequality and frustration with governance have provided fertile ground for xenophobic and Afrophobic movements such as Operation Dudula, which have turned grievances over jobs and public services into hostility towards fellow Africans. What should be a demand for accountable government becomes, instead, an assault upon vulnerable neighbours. In Kenya, deadly protests against the 2024 Finance Bill exposed wider anger over taxation, living costs and political leadership. These developments have different causes. Economic hardship alone cannot explain them, nor justify violence or xenophobia. Yet they raise a common question: what happens when citizens increasingly believe that the economic and political systems governing their lives no longer offer a credible prospect of shared prosperity? And then there is Nigeria. A nation of more than 200 million people, enormously endowed with human and natural resources, yet struggling with poverty, deteriorating purchasing power, inadequate public services and persistent insecurity. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that 133 million Nigerians, approximately 63 per cent of the population surveyed in 2022, were multidimensionally poor. Governments borrow. Public debt accumulates. Taxes and tariffs rise. Citizens are repeatedly asked to sacrifice today for prosperity tomorrow. Yet, for many households, tomorrow never seems to arrive. History warns that prolonged economic exclusion, perceived injustice and declining institutional trust can threaten social cohesion. The danger is not necessarily imminent revolution. It is the gradual erosion of the conditions that sustain a stable society. How did we arrive here? And are our economic policies strengthening the state or progressively undermining its capacity to serve its people? Part of the answer lies in an economic doctrine that has profoundly influenced public policy for decades: the belief that market forces and private ownership generally deliver greater efficiency than government management. Although rooted in earlier economic thought, this philosophy gained political ascendancy through the market-oriented ideas associated with Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and the reforms championed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It subsequently influenced structural adjustment programmes, privatisation and the Washington Consensus. John Maynard Keynes had earlier challenged excessive confidence in markets’ capacity to maintain economic stability without public intervention. These schools of thought address genuine economic problems. Public enterprises can be inefficient, corrupt and politically manipulated. Private investment can introduce capital, technology, competition and managerial discipline. Nigeria’s telecommunications revolution demonstrates what private investment can deliver, but it came from opening the market to competition, not from selling an existing public enterprise. But somewhere between recognising the value of markets and elevating market efficiency into a governing doctrine, a dangerous simplification emerged: that transferring public assets into private hands is itself economic reform. It is not. A change of ownership is a transaction. Reform must be measured by improved services, productive capacity, public welfare and the preservation of national wealth. Consider the underlying contradiction. If a public enterprise fails because of corruption, political interference, incompetent appointments and weak financial management, why should selling it be regarded as the natural solution? Why is the first responsibility of leadership not to confront the institutional failures responsible? Private investors employ professional managers, enforce budgets, maintain financial discipline and demand accountability. None of these practices is beyond the capacity of a competent public institution. Ownership incentives certainly matter, but private ownership can also produce monopolistic pricing, underinvestment and the extraction of excessive returns where regulation is weak. Indeed, a government incapable of managing a public monopoly may be equally incapable of regulating a private one. That is the privatisation paradox. It exposes a deeper danger in leadership: mistaking the disposal of national assets for the difficult work of institutional reconstruction. Economic theories do not govern nations. Leaders do. They choose whether to confront corruption or accommodate it, repair institutions or abandon them, preserve national wealth or consume it. Norway demonstrates that another approach is possible. Its government retains 67 per cent ownership of Equinor, while major energy enterprises such as Statkraft remain publicly owned. Professional management and commercial discipline coexist with strategic public ownership. Petroleum revenues have also been converted into substantial national savings through its sovereign wealth fund. Singapore offers another lesson. Its combination of state investment institutions, commercial enterprise and deliberate housing policy has helped give citizens a material stake in national development. In 2025, more than three-quarters of resident households lived in public housing, while over 91 per cent owned their homes. Neither country provides a formula Nigeria can simply import. Their institutional histories and circumstances differ considerably. But both demonstrate that effective leadership need not choose between market efficiency and public purpose. It can build institutions capable of advancing both. Nigeria’s electricity experience deserves scrutiny in this light. The 2013 privatisation promised investment, efficiency and improved supply. More than a decade later, the President’s Special Adviser on Energy, Olu Verheijen, acknowledged that the process was deeply flawed, with many buyers lacking the financial and technical capacity to make the investments they had promised. Tariff inadequacies, regulatory failures, insufficient investment and longstanding structural weaknesses all contributed. Changing ownership did not eliminate the problems of governance. The question remains urgent. In February 2026, Finance Minister Wale Edun announced plans to offer selected state-owned assets to private investors. The Bureau of Public Enterprises had already identified 91 outstanding public enterprises for possible privatisation or commercialisation, including assets in petroleum, aviation and other strategic sectors. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s revised 2026 budget envisages substantial borrowing and some proceeds from asset sales. Before further disposals proceed, Nigerians deserve to know what lessons have been learned. What is being sold? Why is institutional reform insufficient? Who determines the valuation? What future earnings and strategic capabilities might be relinquished? And how will the proceeds benefit generations yet unborn? An asset sale can create public value when fairly priced and its proceeds are productively invested. But selling income-generating national assets to finance recurrent consumption may simply exchange tomorrow’s wealth for today’s expenditure. A nation cannot sustainably finance its future by repeatedly consuming its inheritance. There is also a national security dimension that economic reformers cannot afford to overlook. National security is not merely the defence of territory or the containment of armed threats. It depends upon economic resilience, reliable infrastructure, institutional legitimacy and the cohesion of society. A government that loses effective control over strategic infrastructure, weakens its fiscal capacity or permits widespread economic exclusion may create vulnerabilities extending far beyond the economy. Such conditions can deepen grievances, weaken national belonging and provide opportunities for criminal and extremist exploitation. Poverty does not automatically produce violence. Nevertheless, security institutions cannot indefinitely compensate for failures of economic governance. There is a fundamental difference between maintaining order and creating the conditions in which order can be sustained. This calls for a National Wealth and Security Review before major strategic assets are sold or concessioned. Such a review, conducted independently of the agencies promoting the transaction and reported to the National Assembly, should require independent valuation, examination of alternatives, legislative scrutiny, assessment of economic and security consequences, transparent use of proceeds and measurable post-transaction accountability. Public enterprises retained by government must face equally rigorous performance scrutiny. But the future of a nation is too important to be left to its government alone. Citizens cannot remain spectators. National assets are held in public trust. Governments are their custodians, not their unrestricted owners. Citizens must therefore demand to know what belongs to them, how it is managed, who benefits from its disposal and what inheritance remains for their children. The media, professional associations, universities and civil society must make these questions central to public debate. Citizenship requires more than voting periodically and complaining afterwards. It demands informed, sustained engagement with decisions shaping the nation’s future. The purpose of economic policy is not merely to satisfy markets or balance government accounts. It is to build a capable, prosperous and secure society. And the true measure of leadership is not what government sells, but what it builds, protects and leaves behind. Rear Admiral Ati-John (Rtd) is a Distinguished Fellow of the National Defence College, Abuja. He writes from Lagos