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 Daily Independent Online.
* Monday, August 09, 2004.
Obasanjo seals BFIG’s fate on
ALSCON
Sanya Adejokun
(Abuja)
Bassey Udo
and Chesa Chesa
(Uyo)
Despite being
disqualified from the bid for the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria
(ALSCON), Russian Aluminium (RUSAL) may still take over the management of
the $3.2 billion (N448 billion) plant.
RUSAL and
BFIGroup were the two companies pre-qualified by the National Council on
Privatisation (NCP) to take over the 77.5 per cent Federal Government
equity in ALSCON as core investor. Each of them was disqualified at some
stage in the sale process.
However,
President Olusegun Obasanjo probably drew a line on the argument at the
weekend when he said the disqualification of the BFIG is irrevocable and
that RUSAL was unfairly treated by both the NCP and the Bureau of Public
Enterprises (BPE).
That is not the
only problem confronting the BPE.
Its Director General Julius Bala may be courting trouble over the
poor handling of the sale.
Last week, some
senior officials of the bureau drew the attention of members of the NCP
to legal flaws in the disqualification of the BFIG, an American-based
consortium of Nigerian investors. They accused Bala of acting in a manner
“capable of dragging the credibility of the government privatisation
programme into disrepute”.
To add to the
troubles facing the BPE, robbers have been visiting the agency in recent
months apparently to steal money. Some of its staff are now helping the
police to unravel the mystery.
The latest
incident happened last week when thieves invaded the headquarters of the
agency in Abuja in search of N4 million they thought was kept in a safe
in the accounts department.
At the financial
bids opening for ALSCON on June 14, RUSAL was disqualified for submitting
a conditional bid of $205 million, while BFIG emerged preferred bidder
with a $410 million offer.
But the BFIG was
yet to sign the Sales/Purchase Agreement (SPA) and to pay the mandatory
10 per cent of the offer when it was disqualified by the BPE on grounds
that it did not meet the payment deadline.
Although the
BFIG has made representations to both the Presidency and the National
Assembly calling for their intervention, Obasanjo appeared to have sealed
its fate at the weekend when he said its disqualification is irrevocable.
ALSCON is based
in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom State, and the President used the opportunity of
his last weekend visit to the state to speak on the issue.
Said he: “We have opened negotiation with
the Russians. If that negotiation goes very well, I want to assure that
before the end of this month the issue of ALSCON would be put behind us”.
Obasanjo, who
seems to have a soft spot for the Russians, condemned the NCP and the BPE
for disqualifying RUSAL.
His words: “If
they (NCP, BPE) were doing it correctly, they should not have
disqualified them for asking for certain conditions others considered
unimportant.
“When I came out
of prison, ALSCON had been in the news. It is one of the places that gave
Nigeria a bad name for corruption. After my election, one place I visited
before my swearing in was ALSCON. There was so much I heard about the
place in my capacity as the Chairman of the advisory board of
Transparency International (TI).
“ALSCON was one
of the companies slated for privatisation. The first thing was the
agreement that was made with ALSCON. It was not a tidy arrangement. So, we
had to disentangle those agreements. We wanted to be transparent and
open. The truth is that if our screening had been right, that group
should have been disqualified, because that group has no technical or
track record of performance in this area.
“ALSCON is a
complex thing. In the aluminium industry today, there are probably about
three that have the technical know-how. Reynolds has been bought over.
So, the one that was initially disqualified, the Russians, have been in
that area. I believe if they were doing it correctly, they should not
have disqualified them. They were asking for certain conditions others
considered unimportant. You cannot talk about ALSCON without talking
about gas or dredging of the Imo River”.
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