 The House of Representatives is poised to reform the Bureau of Public Enterprises. This is to make it more efficient in the management of public assets for the purpose of generating revenue for the country. A public hearing has begun to allow major stakeholders to submit proposals that would strengthen the operations of the BPE. Emmanuel Ehijeme reports. The privatisation and commercialisation drive of the federal government over the years has been dogged with numerous setbacks. This is why the House of Representatives is now proposing a more potent bill to replace the existing one. And this is for improving efficiency in management of the nation's assets. At a time when our country is struggling with significant revenue challenges, it is of utmost importance for us to think critically and act decisively to ensure that we have in place a legal framework for privatisation and public-private partnerships that allow us to collaborate with the private sector to meet our national public infrastructure demands and at the same time make sure that we maximise the value potential of existing assets. The purpose of this bill is to provide the right from legal framework for efficient delivery of public-private partnership infrastructure project to bridge the national deficit estimated at $1.3 trillion. Minister of Works and Housing, Babajideh Fashula says privatisation in the country is not working. A position also supported by the Director-General BPE. They call for an audit-all-private or concessioned enterprises backed by legislation. But I think that it will be helpful to have an audit of all the assets that have been concessioned and privatised in the name of improved efficiency and then to ask, have we achieved that objective? I think if we do that and interrogate very honestly, some of the things that will begin to become obvious to us is that we need to be more circumspect about certain types of assets. And this is the important point. There are certain types of assets that the private sector just is unable to deal with. At point of agreement is that not all infrastructure or assets need to be concessioned or privatised. We agree on that. For Labour, the privatisation policy of the federal government has failed. If we privatise, let me use the word privatise, 234 enterprise in Nigeria and we said it is to create wealth and address the issue of poverty. And as we speak, we are the poverty capital of the world. Something is wrong with that policy. The assets reform bill has passed both first and second reading in the House of Representatives. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.