By Charles Adingupu
Former Managing Director, Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman, has identified her insistence on getting Integrated Logistics Services (INTELS) to conform to procedures and channel management contracts for Nigerians as reasons former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, insisted on her sack.
Bala Usman made this disclosure in her memoir “Stepping on Toes. My Odyssey at the NPA”, which is already on sale.
According to her, someone in the maritime industry had told her that her supervisor might want her office before renewing two contracts over which she had a disagreement with the minister.
Bala Usman stated in the book: “The first of these was the capital dredging contract, and the second was the service boat management contract. While the minister demanded an extension of the tenure of the companies providing capital dredging services without due process, he got approval for the restoration of an expired service boat contract. He got this even though the company was owing the Federal Government, had violated the Treasury Single Account policy, and above all no longer had any contract with the NPA.”
Concerning INTELS, the former NPA boss noted that her management’s running battle with the firm started with the latter’s failure to obey the Treasury Single Account (TSA) directive of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
It is believed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has substantial interest in INTELS.
She stated that as of the time she left office in May 2021, the last remittance into the TSA account was of $30,233,769.85 made on January 2020 for revenue collected from International Oil Companies (IOCs) under INTELS’s agency for the period between April 1, 2018 and July 31, 2018, but added that as of May 2021, the sum of $207,646,757.26 already reconciled as payment for the period between April 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019 was still unremitted.
“For instance, while the total revenue reconciled by the joint committee for the period between 1 November 2017 and 31 March 2018 was $77,973,005.49, only $22,270,774.32 was remitted to the service boats dedicated to TSA. The company retained the balance of $55,702,231.17,” she wrote in the book.
The book also revealed that matters came to a head when, on March 29, 2019, the NPA gave the company a three-month notice of termination in line with Article 8(C) of its agreement with the company, pointing out that, a few weeks earlier, the Authority had once again written to demand full remittance.
In the previous letter, she claimed that the NPA raised its concern over INTELS’ failure to remit the revenue received on behalf of the Authority into the TSA account.
She explained that the letter “highlighted that the supplemental agreement stipulates that the full receipts should go into the account, after which reconciliation is carried out and INTELS gets paid. It was, however, unacceptable that an average of 80 per cent of revenue was withheld by INTELS while a meagre 20 per cent was paid to TSA. The Authority then gave INTELS five days’ grace within which to remit the outstanding revenue. More than 20 days later, the company failed to respond to the request, and the Authority was constrained to invoke the relevant provisions of the agreement for termination of the relationship,” she added.
“I should state here, however, that INTELS had occasionally attributed its refusal and failure to remit these funds to the NPA’s indebtedness to it from another project, the construction of what was termed Onne 4B. This contract was signed with Deep Offshore Limited, a subsidiary of INTELS, in 2013 for the sum of $2.79 billion. It was for the provision of additional berths, dredging, reclamations, shore protection and road networks at the Onne Port within a period of six years and a 25-year concession of the completed works to INTELS,” she noted.
Bala Usman pointed out that, by the agreement, INTELS was expected to fund the contract, while the expenditure would be amortised from revenue raised through service boat operations.
In her words, “My first impression of this project was that Nigeria had been terribly short-changed. Even though I was relatively new to the maritime sector, I had an idea of what project management involved, and I could not imagine how a country would spend $2.79 billion when it was not building an entirely new port. Berths 12–19, which were to be constructed, were, for instance, in an area of not more than 200 metres. I asked questions about the Singaporean ports and other ports that were built at the same time and concluded that Nigeria did not get value for money on this deal.
“However, it was already a done deal, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The company obtained bank loans to execute the project, and the NPA was bearing the burden of the cost of funds. We felt this was unfair. This was a contract for which the government would not just pay but had also offered INTELS a 25-year concession; thus, liability for the cost of funds should not be the responsibility of the government,” she averred.
She explained that when the NPA noticed that the service boat management agency contract with INTELS was due to expire in August 2020, the Authority decided to “wait until the expiration of the contract and re-award through a transparent public procurement process and on terms more favourable to the country.
On December 2, 2019, the NPA published an advertisement inviting prospective agents to Express of Interest (EoI) as service boat operations monitoring agents in the four pilotage districts. The advertisement was published in The Guardian, Leadership, and the Federal Tenders’ Journal in compliance with provisions of the Public Procurement Act, 2007. It was also published on the NPA website.
“To mitigate against the concentration risk posed by single vendor reliance, we decided to engage different agents for each of the four pilotage districts, thereby essentially unbundling the boat pilot agency into four different contracts. The commission for the new agents was pegged at not more than 15%, and the tenor was reduced to 10 years.
“At the close of submission on Monday, January 20, 2020, more than 60 companies, including INTELS responded to the advertisement. The technical evaluation sub-committee of the Parastatals Tender Board evaluated the EoI documents. INTELS’ bid was disqualified for not adhering to the terms of the request for expression of interest.
She further explained that after several rounds of evaluation by its Technical Committee, the Parastatals Tenders Board approved the recommendation for the consideration of the Ministerial Tenders Board.
On November 9, 2020, the Authority wrote to the Minister of Transportation, seeking his endorsement for the Ministerial Tenders Board to process the documents, seek a “No Objection” certificate from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and ultimately, the approval of the Federal Executive Council for the award of the contract.
“The letter explained the rationale for unbundling the contract, the reduction in the commission, the list of all the companies that participated in the bid process, the evaluation process by which we arrived at the list of preferred bidders, the points scored by each of the bidding companies, as well as details of the services that the companies would provide. The Minister did not respond to this letter, neither did he seek the ‘No Objection’ certificate from the BPP as requested.
“On the contrary, we received a letter from his office conveying an approval from President Muhammadu Buhari for the restoration of all contracts involving INTELS and the withdrawal of all court cases to make way for administrative intervention from his office, weeks later.”
She explained that at this point, the presidency had asked for a detailed explanation of all contracts between the NPA and INTELS. Upon the submission of this request, the book informed that the President requested advice from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and the Director General of the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission (ICRC).
“The issue, however, came to an end in November 2021 when the President was reported to have followed the advice of the AGF, DG BPP, Acting DG ICRC, who were unanimous in their conclusion that the NPA was justified in its handling of the matter.”
She claimed that the minister saw her explanation, which was based on the request by the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, as an affront and an act of insubordination.
Bala Usman, however, clarified that her steps were in the interest of the country.
Hadiza Bala Usman also said that contrary to accusations by Amaechi, no money was missing from the NPA during her tenure.
She revealed that at the end of the eight-month investigation by the panel set up to investigate her management by the minister, the agency was found to have remitted more than the alleged non-remittance.
Bala Usman was suspended from office in May 2021 upon allegation that the agency failed to remit about N165 billion in operating surpluses into the Consolidated Revenue Fund Account of the federation.
President Muhammadu Buhari approved Amaechi’s request for the probe of the former MD’s management of NPA’s accounts. He, thereafter, set up an administrative panel of inquiry to investigate the affairs of the NPA, including awards of contracts from 2016 to May 2021.
He also asked the panel to “examine and investigate compliance with communication channels as obtained in the public service.”
The investigation, which lasted for about nine months, returned without proof of non-remittance, although Bala Usman was nevertheless relieved of her position and replaced with Mohammed Bello-Koko, who served as her Executive Director, Finance and Administration. This was after the conclusion of the administrative panel’s duties in February 2022.
But in her memoir released on Tuesday, Bala Usman wrote that: “Then, about the middle of January, I learned that the panel had concluded its report and presented the same to the Minister. While I didn’t get the full details of the report, I learned that the panel could not establish any non-remittance, as had been claimed and sold to the President and Nigerians by the Minister.
“I understood that it was discovered that we had in fact remitted over N182 billion into the Consolidated Revenue Fund within the period. This was said to have made the Minister angry, but there was nothing he could do about it.”
Even then, the former NPA boss said Amaechi requested her dismissal from office from the President.
She wrote: “… the President reportedly told him to send me a copy of the report and request my defence in writing. I learned that the Minister said there was no need for that since I was given the opportunity to defend myself before the panel. The President, however, insisted that since I hadn’t seen the report, I must be given the opportunity to defend myself in writing on the allegations reached by the panel. The Minister then reportedly left the villa, angry at the President’s directive. I waited for the report, but it never came. In its place, a query was delivered to me at home about noon on Friday, January 28, 2022.” Even this query raised no questions about the alleged non-remittance, which has been sold to the public as the main reason for her suspension, she further alleged.
Bala Usman, however, hinted at operational disagreements that may have pitted her against the minister.
She wrote that an industry stakeholder had warned her that the minister would want her out of office when two important contracts were due for renewal.
According to the book,
“The first of these was the capital dredging contract, and the second, the service boat management contract. While the minister demanded an extension of the tenure of the companies providing capital dredging services without due process, he got approval for the restoration of an expired service boat contract. He got this even though the company was owing the federal government, had violated the Treasury Single Account policy, and above all, no longer had any contract with the NPA.”
At the end of it all, however, Bala Usman said she was grateful that the panel did not find anything incriminating against her.
She wrote: “I thank God that the stories reporting the findings of the panel that there were no unremitted funds came out before the announcement of the appointment of the new Managing Director.
“Items four and five of the terms of reference of the administrative panel of inquiry mandated it to examine and investigate ‘the procurement of contracts’ from 2016 until May 2021, as well as ‘determine the revenue and expenditure profile’ of the NPA within the same period.
“I supervised the full implementation of the 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 budgets of the Authority. This amounted to N968,095,758,859.00 (Nine hundred billion, ninety-five million, seven hundred and fifty-eight thousand, eight hundred and fifty-nine Naira), which is about $3,039,352,450.80 (Three billion, thirty-nine million, three hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty thousand US dollars, eight cents).”
