Al-Hikmah University Journal

The basis of public enterprises policies resulted from the world's continual pursuit for socio-economic development. African countries, mainly Nigeria, built large-scale public enterprises with the goal of attaining self reliance, employment generation, egalitarian society, labor welfare among others. Using secondary data drawn from libraries, local and international archives, academic resources, internet sources, etcetera; this paper assessed the contributions of Public Enterprises to national development. The findings reveals that, the objectives of the Public Enterprises has been not achieved, consequently, the aspirations of the citizens were shattered as the operations of enterprises were rife with bad governance, inefficient deployment of resources coupled with intense reliance on the national treasury for financial operations.  Other challenges include massive corruption, ineptitude, nepotism, and gross mismanagement of the resources cum systemic failure and evasion of justice explain the poor performance of Public Enterprises in Nigeria.  In the light of the above, this paper recommend for periodic evaluation of enterprises to identify implementation gaps and  to resist detrimental policies that encourage persistence misappropriation of resources among the stakeholders; such inimical action should be harmoniously contested through  negotiations by the coalition groups or Non-governmental Organizations. There is need to promote the practice of good governance and transformation of judicial institutions. Finally, attitudinal change and value re-orientation of the leaders and the led are required for the success of the Public Enterprises and national development.