Kogi Rescinds Decision to Sell State Property- John Akubo

The Kogi State government might have backtracked on its earlier decision to sell off some legacy projects to finance the 2018 budget.


The controversy was fueled by the state Commissioner of Finance, Otunba Asiwaju Idris, during his budget defence for the ministry.

Many stakeholders in the state had condemned the decision, with some threatening to sue the government, if it went ahead with the plan. But Director-General, Kogi Bureau of Public Private Partnership (BPPP), Mr. Bob Achanya, said contrary to speculations that government planned to sell landed properties and projects of previous administrations, it was out to resuscitate moribund ventures through concession agreements.

He explained this at the weekly inter-ministerial press briefing organised by the Kogi Bureau of Information Services and Grassroots Sensitisation, in collaboration with the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) on Tuesday in Lokoja.

“What I see here is a tactical refusal of the people to accept the concept of concession of projects. I have not seen any sale; we don’t even have a lease. All the talks are political semantics to disparage government policies.

“We are using every option available to resuscitate every moribund project. The BP3 concept is not about privatisation or commercialisation, but involvement of the private sector to resuscitate ailing projects and government investments,” he said.

He disclosed that the bureau received over 600 business proposals from investors interested in various sectors of the state economy in the last two years.