The House of Representatives Standing
Committee on Communications has summoned the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Ma-lam Nasir el-Rufai to explain the grey areas identified in the management contract signed between the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and Pentascope Internat-ional on the Nigerian Teleco-mmunications (NITEL).
This followed the failure of BPE director-general, Mr Julius Bala, to answer ques-tions raised by the committee on the deal. Bala said the agreement was struck in July last year when el-Rufai held sway at the BPE.
The committee, which met with the BPE boss yesterday, said the contract sma-cks of a scam, having been signed with a company that lacked the needed expertise and the financial muscle.
Bala, who said the Pentascope deal was struck to prepare NITEL for privat-isation following the failure of last year’s attempt to sell it off, explained that it was necessary to take specific measures to address the con-sequences of the aborted move.
He, however, said that the contract had since come under heavy scrutiny from a combined effort of the bureau, the ministry of communications and the ministry of finance incorporated. The review, which lasted two months, according to him, did not yield the desired results, as the deal was loaded with technicalities. Thus, he said, a team of consultants had been hired to do a fresh thorough review.
“In the contract itself, review is supposed to be done on annual basis. But it is not a response to a particular problem or anything. Since the agreement is technical, it involves high level technicality, we are employing specific consultants to assist with the review of the contract as well as the performance of Pentascope in the management of NITEL,” he said.
But Bala declined to reveal the outcome of the initial review, saying that if the information gathered was released, Pentascope may go to court. “We want to give information that we can rely on,” he added.
The BPE boss also failed to bring along one of the four documents requested by the committee, saying he tried to trace it but could not. The missing document was a letter purportedly written to el-Rufai by a supposed partner of Pentascope, KPN Royal Dutch Telecoms, which the later announced its partnership with Penta-scope.
Bala also supplied a purported contract agreement between KPN and Penta-scope which is written in Dutch, saying the BPE accepted it as such because it may not have direct bearing on Pentascope – NITEL deal.
But the legislators flared up, wondering how BPE would have signed a contract that involves a document in a language the bureau did not understand.
Bala said he was not in charge when the deal was sealed.
Deputy chairman of the committee, Mr Leo Ogar, also queried the selection of Pent-ascope, when the firm was set up only two years ago, with a share capital of $90,756 and $23,962 paidup capital. The BPE boss again said he could not answer this since he was not the boss then.
The committee also fiercely disagreed with Bala on the level of performance of Pentascope, when he said they met the 600,000 additional lines in one year, as the lawmakers insisted on hav-ing documents showing the contrary.
Ogar showed Bala two position papers from NITEL and Pentascope assessment terms, which showed that only 20,000 lines were installed in the last 16 months. Pentascope’s paper was signed by its chief of plan, Yvonne Wierik, on August 13, 2004, while the NITEL team was led by Johnson Asin-ugo.
The BPE boss denied knowledge of both docu-ments.
Ogar, while expressing dismay at Bala’s failure to respond to the queries raised, said the relevant person was el-Rufai, and announced summons to him to appear next Monday to explain.
“As far as we are conc-erned, that contract is not a contract. Because we feel when you pass on inform-ation that is not correct in a contract that contract is null and void,” he added.
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