From experience, when labour becomes a veto on public-sector reform, things always fall apart. Often, Nigeria has a problem with reform. A government announces an attempt to change the way a failing public institution is managed, workers raise concerns about job security, organised labour mobilises, and before long, the substance of the reform is buried under protests, threats of industrial action and arguments about the protection of public assets.
The unfolding controversy over the proposed concession of King’s College, Lagos, is the latest illustration. The Federal Government has maintained that the college is not being sold or privatised and that legal ownership remains with the government. The King’s College Old Boys’ Association has similarly said it is not acquiring the school but seeking a framework through which it can help manage, finance, modernise and rebuild the institution. Yet teachers and civil servants, acting through labour unions, have opposed the arrangement, citing concerns about their jobs, the character of the school and the process through which the concession was reached. The dispute became sufficiently serious for the government to pause implementation for two weeks while a committee reviews the arrangement.
“The important lesson is not that privatisation is automatically good or that every concession is properly structured. It is that when reform fails, the nation still pays for the status quo.”
The concerns should not simply be dismissed. Transparency, employment protection, affordability and public accountability are legitimate questions whenever a public institution is concessioned. But there is a larger question Nigeria must confront – at what point does the legitimate protection of workers become resistance to institutional reform itself?
Our nation has seen this pattern before. In 2007, towards the end of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, the Federal Government sold a 51-percent stake in the Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries to the Blue Star Oil Services consortium. The deal attracted intense criticism, including from organised labour. The consortium subsequently withdrew from the transaction and sought a refund of the $721 million it had paid, which the Musa Ya’Adua government gave them.
The important lesson is not that privatisation is automatically good or that every concession is properly structured. It is that when reform fails, the nation still pays for the status quo.
The refinery story is particularly instructive because the alternative to the 2007 transaction was essentially continued public control. Nigeria subsequently continued to pour enormous resources into rehabilitating its refineries.
The scale of the expenditure is not a matter of political talks. A Senate document noted that the Federal Government spent almost twice the amount on turnaround maintenance of the Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries between 2010 and 2022 as it spent on fuel subsidy during the same period.
More recently, NNPC’s audited accounts showed that its investments in the Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries rose from N1.72 trillion in 2023 to N2.92 trillion in 2024.
The picture is therefore more complicated than saying that Nigeria simply did nothing. There have been rehabilitation projects and temporary restarts. The Port Harcourt refinery, for instance, resumed product loading in November 2024, while the Warri refinery restarted in December of that year. But subsequent operational difficulties have demonstrated how difficult it remains to achieve sustained commercial performance from the state-owned refining system. NMDPRA data showed Port Harcourt was shut for maintenance in May 2025, while Warri was also shut after its December 2024 restart. That is the real cost of institutional inaction.
The same tension appeared in the power sector. During the 2013 privatisation of PHCN assets, electricity workers protested over unpaid entitlements and threatened to resist the takeover. At one point, unions instructed workers to prevent investors from accessing successor-company assets until labour issues were resolved.
The workers had a legitimate grievance; their severance and other entitlements had to be addressed. Indeed, the Bureau of Public Enterprises later reported that hundreds of billions of naira had been paid to former PHCN workers and that additional labour-related obligations were being processed.
But Nigeria’s experience demonstrates the danger of allowing the employment question to swallow the reform question. A nation cannot permanently preserve inefficient institutions simply because reform creates uncertainty for their employees.
The aviation sector provides another example. Airport concession plans have repeatedly encountered resistance from workers who fear job losses and inadequate protection. In 2026, aviation unions rejected the Enugu Airport concession, while the government maintained that workers’ interests had been considered and later reached a truce with the unions, guaranteeing job security.
The railway sector has faced similar concerns, with railway workers opposing proposed privatisation and warning about possible mass layoffs.
These episodes reveal something important about Nigeria’s public sector. The issue is not that every civil servant is opposed to reform nor is every union objection an attempt to protect privilege. In several cases, governments have genuinely failed to consult workers adequately or settle employment obligations before transferring assets. The problem arises when labour becomes the final decision-maker on whether reform should happen.
King’s College therefore deserves a different standard of debate. If the institution has deteriorated, the question should not be whether government ownership must continue indefinitely because that is the safest administrative option. The questions should be: What investment is required? Who will provide it? What management structure will deliver it? How will teachers be protected? How will students from ordinary Nigerian families retain access? What happens when the concession expires? Who audits the money? What performance indicators will determine success? These questions are more useful than simply saying no.
The experience of St. Gregory’s College is relevant precisely because it demonstrates what alumni-backed intervention can achieve when resources and management are brought together. Its experience does not automatically prove that King’s College should adopt exactly the same model, but it does challenge the assumption that public ownership alone guarantees public interest.
Nigeria’s reform debate should therefore move beyond the simplistic choice between government and private sector.
The government has a responsibility to protect workers. Labour has a responsibility to defend legitimate employment rights. But neither government employees nor unions should have an automatic veto over every attempt to restructure an institution that taxpayers have repeatedly financed without satisfactory results.
The King’s College controversy should become an opportunity to establish a better template – transparent concessions, binding worker protections, measurable performance targets, public reporting, affordability safeguards and independent oversight.
The alternative is familiar. Nigeria keeps ownership, keeps the administrative bottlenecks, keeps paying for maintenance and keeps postponing the difficult decisions. The refinery experience shows how expensive that model can become.
A reform that fails because it is badly designed should be corrected. A reform that raises legitimate labour concerns should be renegotiated. But a reform should not be abandoned merely because those benefiting from the existing structure are powerful enough to organise against it.
Nigeria cannot build efficient public institutions by protecting every existing arrangement indefinitely. Nor can it build a functioning private sector by assuming that every concession is a transfer of public wealth.
The real test is whether our nation can finally create institutions where workers are protected, taxpayers are protected, investors are accountable and the public gets better services.
That is the standard King’s College, Nigeria’s refineries, its airports, railways and other public assets should face.
Anything less merely preserves the system that has produced the problems successive governments are now trying to reform.
