The Presidency, it was learnt, felt the director-general’s cup was full, having failed to have an “effective grasp of the privatisation”.
Mrs. Onagoruwa was relieved of her appointment through a terse statement signed by the media aide to the Vice President, Mr. Umar Sani. It was with immediate effect.
The statement reads:
“Mr. President extends his sincere appreciation to Mrs. Bolanle Onagoruwa for her services to the nation and wishes her the best in her future endeavours.
“The Director General of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), Mrs. Bolanle Onagoruwa, has been relieved of her appointment with immediate effect. She is to hand over to the most Senior Director in the Bureau, Mr. Benjamin Ezra Dikki, who is to hold the position in an acting capacity.
“Mr. President extends his sincere appreciation to Mrs. Bolanle Onagoruwa for her services to the nation and wishes her the best in her future endeavours.”
Her sack yesterday came almost one year after the Senate demanded she be fired.
There were also strong indications that her removal had to do with the row over bids for power firms and the approval of a $23.6m management contract for the Transmission Company of Nigeria awarded to a Canadian firm, Manitoba Hydro International.
Her removal created a drama in the BPE. Dikki, who is named as the acting DG, is due for retirement from BPE as from December 1. He has notified the agency of his disengagement.
Until his sudden appointment, he was in charge of Industry and Services.
The staff were preparing to give Dikki, who is from Kebbi State, a send off only to be greeted with his appointment as acting DG at about 4pm yesterday.
The National Council on Privatisation(NCP), headed by Vice-President Namadi Sambo, was not comfortable with the handling of the BPE by the former DG.
An insider, who spoke in confidence, said: “The government has not been comfortable with Onagoruwa since the bids were conducted for power plants. The NCP felt the BPE was not circumspect enough to have allowed the bids to run into a storm which led to the resignation of the former Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji.
“As a matter of fact, when Nnaji left office, a re-evaluation panel raised by the office of the vice president rejected the bid for Afam Electricity Generation Plant by the consortium(Skipper Nigeria Limited) traced to the ex-minister.
“The decision, however, created a fresh, crisis following a protest over the sidelining of the Bureau of Public Enterprises by the Office of the Vice-President in constituting the Re-evaluation Committee.
“Instead of allowing the BPE to drive the re-evaluation process as enshrined in the Privatisation Law, the Chairman of the NCP asked an Assistant Director in the Ministry of Power to head the new panel.”
Another source, however, said the management contract for the Transmission Company of Nigeria awarded to a Canadian firm, Manitoba Hydro International, by the BPE, sealed the fate of the former DG.
The source claimed that the contract almost created a wedge between the President and the NCP, led by the VP, due to the alleged tardiness of the BPE.
The source said: “The Presidency, at a stage, cancelled the contract only for the President to restore it. Such somersault does not help the system and it could erode foreign investors’ confidence.
“At a stage, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, came out to clarify that the BPE awarded the contract, contrary to the provisions of the Public Procurement Act, 2007.”
Abati said: “The BPE has no power to approve a management contract, according to the provision of Section 16 sub section 4 of the 2007 Public Procurement Act. That section says that the BPE must obtain a certificate of no objection from the Bureau of Public Procurement.
“Another section of the Act says that certain contracts must be approved by the Federal Executive Council. The management contract in question is $23.6m, which is above the approved threshold of BPE. The vice-president is a member of FEC.
“For the BPE to go ahead and approve that contract simply means that due process was not followed. It is a matter of due process, a matter of best practice; it is not a personality matter. The infraction was committed by the BPE.”
The Nation learnt that one of the remote causes of the removal of the DG was the report of the Senate Ad Hoc Committee that probed the privatisation of Federal Government’s enterprises.
The Ad Hoc Committee on December 15 , 2011, recommended the removal of Onagoruwa.
The committee, which made 45 recommendations, also said former Directors-General of BPE Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, Dr. Julius Bala and Mrs. Irene Chigbue should be reprimanded by the NCP.
The committee said the former helmsmen should be “reprimanded for seeking approval directly from the President instead of the NCP as stipulated in the Public Enterprises Act 1999.”
The investigation by the committee, which was led by Senator Ahmed Lawan, covered the activities of the Bureau between 1999 and 2011.
The committee said Onagoruwa should be removed for what it described as “gross incompetence in the management of the BPE and for illegal and fraudulent sale of the five per cent Federal Government’s shares in the Eleme Petrochemical Company Limited (EPCL)”.
It was gathered that the Senate leadership had insisted on the removal of the DG as part of the conditions for the resolution of its frosty relationship with the executive.
The source added: “The Senate said it was not happy with the Presidency’s disdain for its resolutions on key issues.
“Although the President gave Onagoruwa the benefit of the doubt, her handling of transactions in BPE did not earn her the confidence of the NCP and the Presidency.”
A BPE source added: “We were actually preparing for the send-off for Dikki slated for today when the announcement came. Dikki had spent eight years as a director, and it was time for him to go. He was to disengage from the agency from December 1, until the announcement came.
“This was the same manner Onagoruwa was appointed in June 2010. This is life.”
SOURCE: 28 November 2012.
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