THE ROLE OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES IN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA.

Abstract

Public enterprises are mainly government owned business organization charged with the responsibility of providing service that are of public interest. One of the motivating factors for establishing public enterprises in Nigeria is to facilitate social and economic development in sectors that are not considered expedient for private sector investment by foreign and local investors. It is believed that the role of Nigerian public enterprises were compromised in many instances leading to inefficient utilization of resources by public enterprises coupled with heavy dependent on the national treasury for financial operations and their activities characterized by mismanagement of funds and operations, endemic corruption, misuse of monopoly power and bureaucratic suffocation from supervisory ministries and its inability to enhance the social and economic well-being of the people which no doubt placed government under tremendous pressure to initiate various economic reforms with privatization as one of such reform programme as panacea to public enterprises quagmire. The paper adopts quantitative-descriptive method of data collection and analysis from the various scholars. It is against this problem that the paper attempts to x-ray the role of public enterprises within the premise of economic and social development and recommends that Public Corporation should be more productive and efficient, there is need for government to be more transparent and cautious in the exercise so as to avoid exploiting the masses by some few capitalists. and also they should be detached from the civil services, the workers of Public Enterprises should be provided with more incentives like their counterpart in the private sector, lastly, Government should also make more funds available to public corporations to enable them procure necessary equipment and spare-parts.