The Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, has added his voice to the controversy over whether or not the Federal Government should sell some of the country’s assets, warning that the nation’s assets must not be sold to raise money and fix the economy.

This is coming days after reports of plan to sell some of the nation’s assets, especially in the oil and gas sector to ease the impact of the current economic crisis were made.

Governor Oshiomhole told Channels Television in an exclusive interview that he believed the nation’s assets should not be traded in a hurry in the name of raising funds for the country.

He raised concerns that the use of the phrase, ‘sale of assets’ was offensive.

“The word itself, selling assets is offensive. But I don’t know the difference between the so called asset selling and privatisation of state’s assets or privatisation of certain sectors where government is clearly inefficient and where it is believed that private sector’s involvement will be more efficient.

“But to talk of auctioning national assets, I don’t have all the details. I am not able to readily understand that but my own position is that we must not panic as a nation and resort to quick fix which over time we might regret.

“As you can see now, we wanted privatisation of power and the government went ahead to privatise the power in a hurried manner and end up transferring the DISCOS to incompetent hands and Nigeria is worse off today in terms of power stability relative to what it was when it was under the government’s control,” the Governor said. (Channels TV)

•Photo shows Governor Oshiomhole.

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