Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Chapter IX: The Politics and Policies of Oil Deregulation in Nigeria:
Implications and Policy Suggestions
impact as measured by any criteria (Adam, 1994; world Bank, 1995;
Ariyo and Jerome, 1999). The high expectations by those who touted
privatization and deregulation as the panacea to all economic ills are
tampered by a new sense of realism. This is also acknowledged by the
World Bank (World Bank, 1995; White and Bhatia, 1998).
The above notwithstanding, professionals, policy makers and
economic planners alike, tend to hold the view that the policies can
yield substantial benefits in terms of greater efficiency, renewed
investment, budgetary savings and the preservation of scarce
resources for the improvement of public finance (Obadan and Ayodele,
1998). Thus, given the various debates about the desirability and even
the inevitability or otherwise of the programme as a major tool for
meaningful and sustainable economic reform, this paper seeks to
probe into the necessity (ies) for privatisation and petroleum product
deregulation in Nigeria; investigate whether petroleum product
deregulation as proposed by the federal government of Nigeria will
serve as a panacea to the perennial problem of underutilization of the
installed capacity of Nigeria’s refineries and shortages in Nigeria and if
all the necessary infrastructure and social framework to support
deregulation policy were put in place. This is with a view to
recommending appropriate policies for the effectiveness of the
deregulation and privatization policy in the oil sector.
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