Marketing Communication Tools Employed in the Privatization and Commercialization of State-owned Enterprises in Nigeria

The study aims at assessing the marketing communication tools employed in privatization and commercialization of public enterprises. Two population sizes were established for the policy makers and the beneficiaries. The sample size for the policy makers was 100 representing trainees, attaché, senior staff and management staf of the Bureau of Public Enterprises while the population size for the beneficiaries was 76,441,994 of which 1,111 were selected as sample size across Nigeria six geopolitical zones. The instruments used for data collection for this study were the questionnaire and the oral interview. The questionnaire was structured in three sections of close-ended, Likert rating scale and multiple responses. The use of Cronbach’s Alpha revealed 0.814 or 81% reliability of the questionnaire for the beneficiaries. The questionnaire for the beneficiaries was administered mainly to the civil servants, labour groups, industrial suppliers, parastatal managers, journalists and students while the questionnaire for policy makers//implementers were administered staff of Bureau of public enterprise. 58 questionnaires of the policy makers were completed while 904 of the beneficiaries’ questionnaires were completed using judgemental/purposeful sampling technique. Secondary data were obtained from review of related literature. The research design espoused was the survey method using percentages, frequencies, averages, one-way ANOVA and Ztest with the level of significance of 0.05 and confidence level of 95%. The result of study conducted established that marketing communication tools were not utilized in creating awareness of privatization and commercialization of state-owned enterprise to stakeholders in Nigeria. Marketing communication tools were not effective in facilitating the privatization and commercialization process. Furthermore, the perceived level of effectiveness of marketing communication tools in the privatization and commercialization programme has not hindered public/stakeholders’ participation. The result also revealed that the role of marketing communication in promoting a people-participatory and acceptable privatization and commercialization is inactive. The level of public participation in privatization and commercialization is not high. The specific marketing communication tools that have so far been used by the body charged with privatization and commercialization is not rationalized. Consequently, it is advised that policy makers / implementers should reorganise the public communication unit to include marketing professionals. Policy makers should transfer the management of direct marketing to public communication unit. Marketing professionals should be engaged to study the policy, environment and different stakeholder groups to produce marketing communication master plan. This is to ensure that government communicates policy effectively and successfully without overlooking any segment of the stakeholder groups.

The basic reason for establishing public enterprises in all economies has been to enhance development. Government participation in enterprises in Nigeria dates back to the colonial era. The absence of indigenous and foreign companies with requisite capital to invest on railways, roads, bridges, water, telecommunications, electricity and ports facilities stimulated colonial government to embark on the provision of these capital–intensive infrastructural facilities (Igbuzor, 2003) while state involvement in enterprises continued significantly even after independence (Nwoye, 2010). Reasons for Nigerian government involvement in the creating and running of public enterprises include lack of adequate resources for the private sector to provide certain goods and services, political consideration, to guide against monopoly in the provision of basic facilities, and to ensure public access to basic social amenities. Other reasons as observed by Aboyade (1974) are to protect the consumer from exorbitant prices and ensure national security and accelerated development.

The promulgation of Nigerian enterprises promotion decree 1972 (Nwoye, 2010) and Indigenization decree of 1973 (Chambers, 2008) enhanced the development of public enterprises in Nigeria. Consequently, by 1985, there were over 1500 public enterprises owned by the federal, states and local governments in the area of energy, mining, banking, manufacturing, agriculture, telecommunications, transportation, commerce, Insurance among others. Thus, between 1975 and 1995, the federal government invested over $200b in state-owned enterprises (S.O.Es) across the country (Anya, 2000; Nwoye, 2010).