For decades, the public discourse surrounding national infrastructure in Nigeria has been trapped in a tragic binary: government inadequacy or outright privatisation. When a public asset deteriorates, we either watch it crumble under bureaucratic inertia or consider transferring it into commercial hands, often at the risk of pricing it out of reach for ordinary Nigerians. It is precisely within this false choice that much of the resistance to the Federal Government’s approved concession of King’s College, Lagos, to the King’s College Old Boys’ Association has emerged.
To anxious parents, sceptical trade unions and well-meaning commentators, the word concession understandably triggers a defensive reflex. It conjures images of corporate takeovers, soaring school fees and the commercialisation of a 116-year-old national institution. We should not simply dismiss those fears. They stem partly from a national history in which citizens have repeatedly watched public assets deteriorate, become mismanaged, or pass beyond their reach.
This post was originally published on this site.
