‘Senate unaware of plans to sell national assets’

By Tunde Opalana

Senate Committee on Privatisation has denied knowledge of any plan by the Federal Government through the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) to either sell or concession some national assets in order to fund part of the 2021 budget.

The legislature has consequently summoned the Director General of BPE, Mr. Alex Okoh, to brief the committee on its concession and privatisation plan with relevant documents.

Apart from summoning Okoh, the committee said it will pay surprise oversight visit to ascertain to the various locations of the assets being put up for sale or concession to ascertain their current state.

It promised to go for an on the spot assessment in company with consultants and would send own report to the appropriate quarters to compare and contrast.

The committee chairman, Senator Theodore Orji during the BPE budget defence on Tuesday lamented bitterly that the relationship between our committee and the BPE, has not been very cordial due to the behaviour of the Director General.

He said “this is a man that if we call him on phone, he would not answer and if we send him a text message, he would not reply.

How then does he want us to communicate? There should be a synergy between the Senate or the its committee on privatisation, and the BPE because that is the major parastatal that we oversight.

“I also believe that that the Senate Committee on Privatisation should be carried along when most of the arrangement to either sell or concession our national assets are being made so that we would be aware.

Let me assure Nigerians that there is no member of the Senate Committee on Privatisation that knows about all these things except they read it on the pages of newspapers.

“We were never briefed by the management of the BPE. We were not there when the necessary documents were signed. We were never invited at all.

“When the DG, BPE came to defend his agency’s 2021 budget proposal before us, we asked him why he didn’t invite us at least as witnesses, he merely apologised.

This is neither the first time nor the second time that such a thing would happen. “When it happened the first time, I accosted him and asked him why he prevented us from carrying out our statutory job.

However, we felt this is the best time to open up so that tomorrow, Nigerians would not blame the senators of being part of the sale of our national assets, we know nothing about the entire transactions as a committee”.

The committee demanded that patriotic Nigerians should participate in the privatisation process. Sen. Orji said “I am not against a situation whereby capable Nigerians buying the national assets so far they would show patriotism in handling it.

However, what I am against is a situation whereby the assets would be sold to people who would not be capable of handling them.

“A good example is the situation we are experiencing with the paper mills. None of them is working again today because I don’t think the people who bought them are capable.

If Nigerians who are capable of managing our national assets are interested, let us sell to them at a reasonable price so that nobody would feel cheated.

‘Apart from the latest national assets listed by the BPE to concession or sell in 2021, our committee had also listed those that had been done in the past with a view to resisting the entire transactions and the process adopted in putting them up for sale or concession.

Some of them are the Transcorp Hilton, the power plants, and the assets in the oil and gas sector that had been concessioned.

The committee assured Nigerians that it will carry out its functions by summoning the DG, BPE, demand for all the documents relating to the entire transactions.

He said “we would ascertain whether due process were followed. We would also look at the amount that the BPE put up the assets for either outright sale or concession.

We would scrutinise the papers to see whether they are fair or ridiculous amounts because what Nigeria as a nation needs now, is money”.