By any reasonable measure, transportation, electricity and healthcare are not ordinary commodities. They are public goods; essential services upon which productivity, dignity and even life itself depend.
When governments abdicate responsibility for these sectors and surrender them almost entirely to private operators, society pays a heavy price.
Across Nigeria today, that price is painfully clear: soaring fares, unaffordable electricity bills, rising medical costs and a growing sense that citizens have been left unprotected in a marketplace driven purely by profit.
The argument is not that the private sector has no role to play. Rather, it is that government must never withdraw to the sidelines in sectors so central to social welfare. Where public oversight is weak or absent, exploitation thrives.
In recent years, Nigerians have watched the cost of moving from one place to another triple in some corridors. Electricity tariffs have risen repeatedly, yet supply remains unreliable for many households and businesses. Healthcare costs, consultation fees, diagnostics, drugs and hospital admissions, have climbed beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.
The justification is always the same: market realities, cost recovery, exchange rates, fuel prices. But one uncomfortable truth is rarely addressed, many of these private operators continue to enjoy government concessions, tax waivers, subsidies, guarantees and policy protection. In effect, the state cushions private profits while citizens absorb the shock of rising prices.
This is a dangerous imbalance. When government socialises risk for private operators but privatises pain for the people, governance itself loses legitimacy.
Transportation determines access to work, school and opportunity. Electricity powers homes, hospitals, factories and digital economies. Healthcare is the difference between life and death. Treating these sectors purely as profit centres ignores their social function.
In Nigeria, high transport costs now eat deeply into household income. For many workers, commuting costs rival rent and food expenses. Electricity tariffs rise, yet families still spend heavily on generators, fuel and maintenance. In healthcare, people delay or avoid treatment altogether because they simply cannot afford it and often with tragic consequences.
When essential services become luxuries, inequality deepens. The wealthy adapt and the poor suffer.
Proponents of full privatisation often cite advanced economies as examples to emulate. But this comparison is usually selective and grossly misleading.
In most developed countries, public transportation is heavily subsidised and regulated. Governments own rail systems, fund bus networks and cap fares to ensure affordability.
Electricity markets, even when privately operated, are tightly regulated to protect consumers from price shocks and monopolistic practices. Healthcare, whether fully public or mixed, is guided by strong public financing and universal access principles.
The difference is not the absence of private players, but the presence of a strong, interventionist state that places citizens’ welfare above unchecked profit.
In West generally with all the development, sophistication and wealth, regulation is firm, social protection is deliberate and exploitation is constrained.
For most African countries, especially Nigeria, where is the protection? This is the fundamental question Nigerians are asking today as travel costs have nearly tripled.
The government surrender public transportation; with no national carrier, no national transport system or reliable functional states owned leaving the population venerable at every holiday season.
Regulatory agencies exist, but their impact often feels muted. Consumer protection is promised, yet rarely felt. Public interest is invoked, but seldom enforced. In many cases, policy decisions appear more responsive to operator pressures than to citizen hardship.
The solution is not to nationalise everything, nor to demonise private enterprise. It is to restore balance. Retaining a strategic control of essential services, even within public–private models will send the nation to hell.
Setting and enforcing clear price regulation that reflects social realities, not just operator balance sheets.
Investing directly in public transportation, like it is done for public hospitals and public power infrastructure as benchmarks that will discipline the market is desirable.
Withdraw unjustified concessions to private operators who pass all costs to citizens while enjoying government support.
Strengthen consumer protection institutions so citizens are not voiceless in the face of corporate power.
Above all, government must remember that its primary obligation is not to the markets, but to people.
A nation that cannot guarantee affordable movement, basic energy and accessible healthcare is a nation that has retreated from its most fundamental duties because development is not measured only by profit margins or balance sheets, but by how well the most vulnerable are shielded from hardship.
Nigeria’s rising costs in transportation, electricity and healthcare are not merely economic indicators; they are moral signals. They tell a story of a society at risk of pricing its own citizens out of dignity.
The question, therefore, is not whether government should intervene, but why it ever stopped protecting the people in the first place.
By Lucky George [Ph.D.] a Public Relations and Tourism Analyst.