Threats of possible cancellation of the troubled contract between Pentascope International and the Bureau for Public Enterprises for the management of Nigeria Telecommunications Limited seems far from over as the House of Representatives has written to the Attorney General of the Federation for advice on its possible termination.
This comes on the heels of revelation that the contract sum had been illegally raised from $10 milion to $16 million but for protests from stakeholders, which forced a reversal of the decision.
Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Communications, Mr. Leo Ogor, in a press briefing in Abuja advised the Bureau of Public Enterprises to look critically into all aspects of the contract, especially portions that allowed Pentascope to earn as much as $43 million as management fees.
Ogor warned that the validity of this clause in the contract needed to be established before any review is carried out.
He noted that Pentascope should not have been given the management job as it did not meet any of the four criteria as contained in the pre-qualification advertisement which bidders must satisfy to qualify to manage the national operator.
The conditions were that the manager must be an international telecommunications operator with evidence of having installed and managed at least one million telephone lines, have the track record in network expansion and in a developing country and sufficient resources to enhance NITEL's growth.
"Based on these pre-qualifications criteria, Pentascope International met none of them. The contractor was just two months old before the expression of interest was published by BPE.
�Pentascope International is a consultancy firm and had never managed a network anywhere in the world. But the company claimed in its bid document that it would depend on KPN's technical capabilities, which it stated in the agreement," Ogor explained.
According to him, the fixed contract sum of $10 million which, Pentascope was originally supposed to earn for the three year period it was to manage the network, was reviewed to $16 million, but the decision was reversed after protests from some stakeholders.
Pentascope�s Director of Finance and Operations in Nigeria, Mr. Josbert Kester, confirmed the withdrawal of the Memorandum of Understanding of the review in September.
Following several squabbles on the management contract, President Olusegun Obasanjo had directed BPE, the Ministry of Communications and NITEL Board of Directors to ensure a swift review of the contract by November 15.
Fixing an appropriate fee for the Dutch managers is one of the issues that stalled the realisation of the deadline.
