The House of Representatives Committee on Communication has alleged irregularities in the contract between Pentascope International and the Nigerian Telecommunic-ations Limited (NITEL) for the management of NITEL.
The committee has consequently summoned the director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Dr Julius Bala for explanations.
The committee said it has established that Pentascope International lacks the technical expertise and managerial capability to win the contract to manage NITEL but hurriedly hired the services of another foreign company, VW Network Bouw, to assist it in implementing the rollout programme for NITEL.
The perceived anomaly in the contract, according to the committee, is not without the knowledge of the BPE, hence the invitation to its director general to clear the air.
According to a statement by the deputy chairman of the communications committee of the House, Hon Leon Okuweh Ogoh, the contract which was sealed when Malam Nasir el-Rufai was director general at the BPE, was replete with irregularities and that “there was a mis-representation of facts which boils down to criminality.”
The committee said it swung to action to summon the BPE director general following a letter of comp-laint it received from KPN Royal Dutch Telecoms on the award of the contract to Pentascope.
It said also that in a letter of June 10, 2002, KPN had revealed that Pentascope International had for the purposes of the contract, recruited VW Network Bouw, adding that until July 2002, Network Bouw was also part of KPN Royal Dutch Telecoms as the network construction company for Dutch Telecoms network.
The committee quoted the KPN as saying that as from July 31, 2002, the com-pany became part of the Royal Volker Wessels Stevin group as VW Network Bouw and KPN Royal still maintains 45 percent of the shares of VW Network Bouw.
KPN also said in its letter to the committee on February 26, 2003, regarding the agreement between Pentascope International and VW Network Bouw, that KPN Telecoms BV was not party to the agreement.
In a letter of summons to Dr Julius Bala, the committee insisted that the BPE boss must personally appear before the committee, even as it alleged that Dr Bala had on two occasions, failed to hon-our invitations by the committee on the matter, and inst-ead, sent ill-informed officials of the bureau to represent him.
Dr Bala is required by the committee to come along with the Dutch and translated English versions of the agreement between KPN Royal Dutch Telecoms and Pentascope on the basis of which Pentascope was a warded the NITEL management contract.
He is also expected to come along with details of Pentascope International BV Private Limited, names of all firms that responded to the invitation for expression of interest for management of NITEL and M-Tel and the firms that were also invited to participate in the due diligence process, including those that signed the confidentiality agreement which submitted their operational, organisational, legal, commercial and financial proposals.
|
