The Accidental Public Servant
Page 19
Apparently, this went out of BPE’s walls and this was the reason for Captain Abdul’s visit. So I
admitted to him that we were indeed considering it but had not yet come to any decision on the matter.
“Well the vice-president knows about it and I have a house that you should buy.”
“Ok, we will look at that, but let us decide on it first,” I said.
“No, you are not listening to me. I handle the VP’s business, he has heard about your intentions to
have a guest house. Write to him, he will approve it, and I have the house that you will buy.”
“Fine. Leave, Abdul. I have got some work to do”
And he left. We had the sub-committee report back the desirability of a guest house and had further
discussion in the management meeting. Though I had some reservations, we resolved to go ahead with
the acquisition of the council guest house. I did not even remember the conversation with Abdul when
we wrote to Atiku as chairman of the privatization council about it, and the memo came back
approved. As did Abdul.
“You’ve got your approval. I have the house.”
“Four bedroom house?”
“Yes.”
“See the director of council affairs, Ibrahim and he’ll send our people to look at it and if it meets our
requirements, then give us an offer.”
“No, all this ‘long grammar’ is not necessary; this is the house you are going to buy.”
By that point, I began to get really irritated, so I just put the whole thing on hold. A week or so later,
Abdul came to my office and what he did was quite dramatic.
“Nasir, we are not Kaduna boys anymore,” he said. “We are grown up now. I am telling you what I
do for a living.”
He dug into his pocket, brought out a diplomatic passport, put it on the table and said,
“This is a diplomatic passport. Take a look at it, it is my passport.”
So I looked at it, and yes, it was a diplomatic passport with his picture and his name and personal
information.
“Congratulations”, I said. So what is your point?”
“How do you think someone you think is a loser like me can get a diplomatic passport? You think I
am a loser, don’t you?”
“Abdul, you are a loser, and always will be.”
“I have a diplomatic passport and you do not because I act and make money for the vice-president,
and I am telling you, the reason why he approved your proposal to buy a guest house is because you
are buying this particular house that I will show you. I will tell you the price you will pay.”
“Are you done? If so, then get out of my office or I will have you thrown out.”
“You are talking to me like that?
“Yes. Get out of here. Otherwise, I will have you bloody thrown out.”
He left. I decided I was not going to move on the acquisition of the guest house, I just left it
unattended. Abdul did not come back to me. After about a month, the staff working on identifying the
choices of potential guest houses came back to me with a report of five houses that they had
identified, and there was one in particular they said was the best due to its proximity –within walking
distance actually from the BPE office. I circled it and suggested contacting the property owners so
that they could give us an offer. The offer came in at 2.8 million US dollars, then equivalent to some
294 million naira.
“Are these detached houses that expensive?” I asked. I was incredulous, but referred it to the
committee chaired by BPE's internal auditor, Edwin Azodo, to review and negotiate.
The committee then wrote to either the valuation units of the FCDA or the Federal Ministry of Works
and Housing for advice, and we hired an estate surveyor and valuer to give us an opinion on the
purchase value of the property. What came back was a valuation ranging down from ₦180 million as
capital value, through ₦140 million as forced sales value to ₦80 million as replacement cost
(excluding open market value of land). The committee recommended that we counter-offer the owners
of this house at a price above replacement cost but less than the forced sales value - we agreed to
make the firm offer of ₦109.5 million.
I do not know how it happened, whether the property was really the best or if it was rigged within the
BPE system, but the house that was highly recommended by our staff committee was Abdul’s house.
The offer of ₦294 million came from him. He came back to see me.
“I do not want to see you, Abdul.”
“Well, you are buying a house from me, you better see me. Look, my price is ₦294 million, and the
valuation was ₦180 million, how can you offer me ₦109.5 million, what is wrong with you?”
“That is the maximum we can offer,” I said.
“You are going to buy this house at my price. You will see the meaning of power.” And with that, he
stormed out of my office. I was incensed that Abdul would come to my office, talk to me in this way,
while raising his voice. At this point, I called Dr. Usman Bugaje, my friend, who was Atiku’s
political adviser.
“You know, our people have a saying,” I said to him in Hausa language, "Biri yana kama da mutum"
literally translating into “the monkey sometimes resembles a human” or "if it looks like a duck, walks
like a duck, then it must be a duck."
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this Abdul has been coming to my office, dropping words and issuing threats. I know him as a
scammer from Kaduna, but I am beginning to take him and his statements seriously. I am compelled by
how events are unfolding to believe some of his stories.”
“Why?”
I explained to Dr. Bugaje everything that had happened, ending with the question. “Is Atiku involved
in this? If he truly is, I am not going to be in this job for much longer. I am not going to work like
this.” Usman appealed that I should calm down, promising he would look into it and get back to me.
Bugaje spoke to Atiku, who then called me and said, “Nasir, about this guest house business – I know
Abdul. I know him, he brought the house, he wanted it purchased, I heard you were looking for a guest
house, and I said I would introduce him to you, but he said he knew you from Kaduna. I thought you
were friends.”
“I know him. That is all” I said.
“I have no hand in determining at what price the house should be bought and I did not encourage him
to insult you in any way,” said the Vice-President.
“Well, Mr Vice-President, this is what he said: he said you got him a diplomatic passport because he
does many things for you, he said that I will buy the guest house at his price, he said he will show me
power.”
Atiku said Abdul was lying and he was sorry Abdul spoke to me that way; that he was going to cut
Abdul off, and I should go and decide whatever I wanted to do about the purchase of the house.
“We will offer to buy the house, our staff like it, I have not seen the house, but we will buy it at our
price - one that we can defend before anyone on behalf of the Privatization Council.”
“Whatever you decide is fine. I just want you to know that I am not involved in anything to do with the
house or Abdul’s conduct in this instance.”
This was the first time Atiku or someone associated with him came close to suggesting that I become
part of any impropriety but I am convinced he initially acquiesc
ed to it. It is just that he saw it going
out of control and did not know what kind of man I was. I think he remembered that at our very first
meeting in April 1999, I had the temerity to argue with Obasanjo and he may have just decided to
back off. I never saw Abdul again. Nobody on the VP’s staff ever came to my office to boldly ask for
anything inappropriate until I moved to the FCT. I think Atiku probably called Abdul and just said,
“Keep off this guy. He is mad.”
At this point, we decided to send a memo to the Vice-President to the effect that further to his
approval to acquire a guest house, we had examined the housing market, and finally identified this
guest house, the government valuers and our consultants have appraised it at between 80 and 180
million naira, so please kindly approve that we offer 109.5 million naira for the house. The memo
went to the VP on June 28, 2000 and returned the next day, approved.
In a way, that early ‘Abdul incident’ enabled me to buy my peace. I think Atiku understood I was not
going to do these dodgy things and I was going to face him with any such issue anyway. To this day, I
still do not know what arrangement, if any, Atiku may have had with Abdul, but I was still willing to
give him the benefit of the doubt and move on. It was not long before another incident presented itself
that raised more questions than it answered.
The Cost of Doing Business
When it became clear that the state of our electricity was such that the resources of government alone
would not be adequate to address the deficit and that without private sector investment, it would be
impossible to solve our electricity problem, we decided to attempt deregulating electricity. We hired
NERA of South Africa- a consulting firm, and worked with Anil Kapoor and Trevor Byer of the
World Bank, as well as our BPE staff to draft the new Electric Power Policy that would be the basis
for legal and regulatory reforms of the electricity supply industry. The BPE team, initially led by
Abdulkareem Adesokan, made very important inputs leading to the final version which was approved
by the Electric Power Sector Steering Committee (EPIC) and published in 2000. CMS Cameron
McKenna of Washington DC led the consortium that was retained to draft the new Electric Power
Sector Reform Bill in 2002. The bill sought to deregulate the electricity industry, establish an
independent regulator for the sector and create a framework for privatizing NEPA.
The next step was to begin discussions with the National Assembly committees on power and
privatization to get the draft law passed. The privatization committees already knew us, but the
electric power committees did not. We presented our plan first to the Senate Committee with the
consultants present and they asked questions, because it was a very complicated and technical piece
of legislation. After we finished, the committee asked everyone to leave because they wanted to meet
with just me - the DG alone, ‘in camera’.
'In camera', the senators led by the committee chair, Dr. Nnamdi Eriobuna and his colleague Jonathan
Zwingina, reviewed our groundwork and observed that $100 million plus credit that we had from the
World Bank to support privatization and policy reforms was a positive development. Therefore, by
the committee's reasoning, Senator Eriobuna suggested that the BPE finds a way to 'lobby' the
committee members with a payment of $5 million if we wanted a speedy passage of the electricity
bill. I was taken aback, but recovered quickly enough to explain that this was impossible for at least
four reasons.
One, as a matter of personal principle, I explained, I do not do that kind of thing and the institution I
head does not do that either. Two, this legislation was not some special interest pitch that would
benefit some elite few; the legislation had universal beneficiaries – every Nigerian, including them,
would benefit. Electricity is a problem for everyone in the country, and I did not think that there were
any beneficiaries willing to pay that "lobbying cost". Third, even if we wanted or were willing to, we
did not have this $100 million sitting in the BPE bank account from which we could just write a
cheque. I explained that the World Bank kept the funds and would disburse accordingly to a
beneficiary of a contract after compliance with established procurement and disbursement approval
procedures. Finally, when all these obstacles are cleared, the vice-president, as my boss, would have
to know about this $5 million payment, its purpose and would have to approve it. I thought that
bringing the vice president into the picture would make them back off somewhat from this
preposterous position.
The committee’s chairman responded that on the first two, the BPE had to make a decision on whether
or not it wanted this bill passed – as though I or the BPE were the special interest. On the third item,
one of the senators’ opinion was that because I knew the World Bank and its inner workings, we
should be able to fashion a way to get them $5 million out of the kitty, somehow. On the final point,
they agreed to meet with the vice-president and directly request him to approve their demand of a $5
million kickback. The vice-president, as always, appeared shocked when I briefed him on what the
senators demanded, and he agreed that this was something he wanted to hear and see with his own
ears and eyes.
We did convene the meeting and the vice-president refused to play ball. He said flat-out that no such
transaction would take place. Instead, he suggested we took the committee members on a study tour
abroad to appreciate the intricacies of power sector reforms. The chairmen and deputy chairs of the
electric power committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives were therefore sponsored
by the BPE on study tours to Chile and Canada to ‘observe’ the functioning of privatized electricity
markets at a cost of about $76,000 in March 2002. While the House Committee chairman Abdullahi
Idris Umar took the assignment seriously and did a lot to make the bill pass through the legislature,
Senator Eriobuna was only interested in cashing in his flight ticket and pocketing the per diem! Tijjani
Abdullahi suggested that we met with ABU alumnus and friend, Speaker Ghali Umar Na’Abba to
solicit his cooperation in getting the EPSR Bill passed. We scheduled an appointment and he
promised to support the bill in a meeting with many principal officers of the House in attendance.
After the official meeting, Na’Abba asked to meet with me and Tijjani in private, during which he
indicated interest in acquiring government stake in one or two oil services companies listed for
privatization. We informed him that we were working to resolve some outstanding legal issues
surrounding the OSCs and would advertise them for sale as soon as practicable, advising him to
express interest at that point.
I do not know if there were any other meetings between the vice president and the senators about this
topic in my absence, but at a point, Atiku asked one of his political associates and Anambra State
‘godfather’ Emeka Offor to meet us for a briefing to ‘assist in getting the EPSR bill passed’. The VP
also suggested we deposit some funds on 30-day call in a bank in which Mr Offor had substantial
interest. We complied as we saw no ethical violation since we placed un-remitted funds on call in
months later, months before I left the BPE, the president simply refused to sign it into law. After 30
days, the bill lapsed and did not become law at that point, but was re-presented in 2005 and
subsequently passed into law, virtually unaltered from the 2003 version. The reason the president
withheld his approval the first time was because the bill gave Atiku, as chairman of the National
Council on Privatisation, 'too much power’ in determining the course and pace of the reform of the
electricity supply industry. It was Dr. Olu Agunloye, who was appointed Minister of Power shortly
before the bill was passed, who created this myth in President Obasanjo's mind to protect his own
power and interests which in the opinion of the BPE staff, served at least two purposes - (i) the
ministry of power maintained control of the electricity industry and the benefits of the procurement
contracts associated for at least another year or so, and (ii) the overall reform of the industry was
delayed for at least two more years with grave consequences for the country - something which we
are still experiencing and suffering from.
As for Senator Nnamdi Eriobuna who demanded the $5 million kickback, I was reliably informed that
Atiku ensured that the PDP did not re-nominate him to contest that Senate seat and he has not been
seen nor heard from since then in the political space.
A $20 Million Hole
The very first state-owned company we attempted to sell saw more shenanigans. African Petroleum