The Bureau of Public Enterprise, BPE, is at the moment engulfed in crisis over allegations of over-payment of N1.45 billion legal and consultancy fees by the management.
According to a report by The Nation, a lawyer was paid N950 million for the liquidation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, after the company had ceased to exist and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation got N500 million for consultancy.
According to the report, the fees were paid contrary to the advice of the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN) and the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP.
Aside from the legal and consultancy fee crisis, top directors of the agency were implicated in a job racket involving the recruitment of 60 persons just few days to the expiration of the administration of former President, Goodluck Jonathan.
The workers involved are said to be mostly children and relatives of the directors, an action that is contrary to the ethics of the agency.
According to findings, the pioneer chairman of BPE, the late Hamzat Zayyad, had put a code of conduct in place which forbids any employee from hiring his or her relations in the agency.
The investigation revealed that the curious legal fee of N950million was paid after a meeting of the National Council on Privatisation, NCP, was hurriedly convened by ex-Vice President, Namadi Sambo on April 18.
The NCP was said to have been deceived into believing that the former AGF and the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, had withdrawn their letters of objection to the payment of the N950million.
A source quoted by the report said: “There is disquiet in BPE over the payment of N950million to a PDP lawyer to wind down PHCN. The payment was just unnecessary because the liquidation of the PHCN had been concluded since 2013. So, it was shocking to some members of the management that such a curious huge bill came for no service provided in 2015. We suspected that the payment was a slush fund to offset campaign expenses.
“By the Power Sector Reform Act of 2005, the Federal Government had unbundled the National Electric Power Authority into 11 distribution companies and six generation firms. These were the companies we privatised in 2013. The PHCN then ceased to exist. There was no formal need to wind down PHCN in 2015 to the extent of paying N950million.”
Another Ministry of Justice source quoted by the report said: “By our records, the former AGF opposed the payment of the N950million as legal fees to the said lawyer because the liquidation of PHCN had long been completed.
“Even the ex-AGF said assuming that the NCP was talking of nominal liquidation, the accruing legal fees ought not to be more than N50million.
“The records are there for the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to examine all the correspondences.”
As if the legal fee is not bad enough for the BPE, tension is also rising with the discovery of the payment of another N500million payment to the office of the Accountant General of Federation for consultancy services. But sources say no consultancy job of any nature existed.
“They told us that the N500million was approved by NCP as consultancy payment to the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. There was no specific consultancy job given to the OAGF,” a director added.
On the employment scandal, it was also learnt that the 60 workers, mostly relations of top directors in BPE, were recruited three weeks to the end of Jonathan’s administration.
A source said: “Out of the 60 new workers, 22 who had been casual workers for five years were retained when even there is no provision for casual jobs in BPE.
“The directors shared the appointments without recourse to the Federal Character Principle. For instance, one brought his daughter, four also employed their children and another engaged his ‘wife’ or mother of his children.”
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