A verbal feud has begun between a former vice president, Atiku Abubakar and the governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, over the controversial Pentascope deal through which the federal government tried to privatise Nigeria’s telecoms carrier, the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL).
Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai
The two politicians have been throwing verbal missiles at each while also accusing each other of corruption in a deal many believed was fraught with corruption, Abusidiqu reports.
El-Rufai who was the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) had in his book “The Accidental Public Servant”, shot the first jibe at Atiku suggesting that as chairman of the National Council on Privatization (NCP), he meddled in the privatisation of NITEL which ultimately truncated the process.
El-Rufai alleged that Atiku’s aggressiveness evidenced by his intrusion suggested that he had monetary interest in some of the deals.
However, Atiku who was entrusted with the responsibility of managing the privatization programme fired back saying that the former minister was bitter because a particular bidder, Motorola, lost out in one of the transactions.
According to The Punch, Atiku said: “the fact of the contract are like this: Obasanjo agreed with the NCP that the former BPE DG was wrong not to have disclosed his interest and that he had failed the test of transparency by not disclosing that his brother was on the board of Motorola.”
“You know, for instance, that it is a very serious offence to fail, refuse or neglect to disclose your interest whether directly or through someone else, in dealing with such an important transaction. But, the President in his wisdom decided that the contract be split into three, with each of the contenders, Motorola, Ericsson and the Chinese company – I think Huawei – taking a portion. As if to vindicate the NCP, by 2007 when we left office, the two others apart from Motorola had completed their own contracts. You can go and find out if they (Motorola) have finished,” he said.
The former vice president said that he would like Nigerians to be smart enough to read between the lines. He inquired why the former FCT minister treats the Motorola issue with such persistent personal bitterness and why he is making it a heavy matter.
Attiku said that anybody can play to the gallery and deceive the people. He noted that transparency is a key issue of conducting any business, including privatisation. “Conflict of interest is inconsistent with transparency,” he said.
“If you are a privatisation head and you have a relationship with a particular person connected with one of the companies making bids, it is a moral and legal duty to disclose that relationship or interest. Pretending that you have no relationship with the person who is rooting for a particular bidder is not altogether tidy and transparent. If he had no interest in a particular company for sentimental reasons, why is he making too much fuss about Motorola losing the bid?” Atiku pointed.
However, Atiku’s comment has sparked El-Rufai’s fury thereby coming out to fire on all cylinders, pointedly accusing the former vice president of manipulating the deal.
Muyiwa Adekeye, media advisor to El-Rufai said in a statement that:“It is understandable that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar would be enduring some unease at the disclosures made in ‘The Accidental Public Servant’, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s recent book.”
According to Adekeye, Atiku’s media team had made a vain effort to confuse Nigerians about his “serial interference with contract award processes” detailed in El-Rufai’s book, claiming in series of rebuttals that Atiku did not meddle in the privatisation processes. To him such claims are at variance with the substance of established facts that the former vice president used his position to seek contracts for friends.
In the statement, Adekele said: “now that Atiku himself has spoken on the controversial NITEL GSM contract involving Ericsson and Motorola, it is obvious that the attempt at confusing issues persists,” the statement said. It is untrue that the NITEL GSM contract in question was split. Rather it was awarded to Ericsson, but at the lower price submitted by Motorola, because of Atiku’s intense lobby and smears deployed to advance Ericsson’s bid. Atiku and Abdullahi Yari, his then ADC, at different times spoke to El-Rufai to favour Ericsson.”
He challenged Atiku to take up the “responsibility to explain why he became an Ericsson salesman, although the investigations conducted by Motorola after the debacle makes clear he was not engaged in an altruistic mission.”
Adekeye said that the incident had diplomatic repercussions, as the American government wrote to protest this loss by an American company that had submitted the cheaper bid.
On the one hand, Adekeye denied Atiku’s insistence that El-Rufai’s brother was a shareholder and member of Motorola’s board. On another hand, El-Rufai’s spokesman said on the issue of Pentascope that they see the same pattern of muddying the waters with falsehood. He pointed out that as chairman of the NCP, “Atiku gave his approval in writing on 21 February 2003 for the management contract with Pentascope to be signed.”
Mr Adekeye insisted that for the records, NITEL never made any huge profits as claimed by the Atiku camp, as it had never paid a single dividend to the Federal Government until the BPE compelled it to pay N3b in 2001.
Recently, El-Rufai had declared war on houses built on the land of the public institutions; yet, some of the owners of demolished buildings will be compensated.
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