The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE)

Reps ask FG to stop sale of refineries

The House of Representatives Committee on Privatisation has asked the Federal government to stop the proposed privatisation of the nation’s three refineries with immediate effect.

Slated for sale by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) are the Port-Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries.

The decision of the lawmakers followed the disclosure by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) that it was not aware of the proposed sale.

The lawmakers said the proposed sale failed to follow due process with NNPC acting without the involvement of other stakeholders as contained in the BPE Act.

The House said NNPC action violated Section 11 of the BPE Act, 2009.

The directive was handed down Wednesday during an interactive session between House Committee on Privatisation, NNPC and BPE on the subject matter.

In his presentation, NNPC’s Group Executive Director (Refineries), Anibor Kragba, who represented the Minister of State (Petroleum Resources) and NNPC’s Group Managing Director (GMD), Ibe Kachikwu, had told the Committee that the exercise was not privatisation.

According to him, rehabilitation of the refineries is capital intensive which was responsible for sourcing for core investors that can undertake the project and revive the refineries.

However trouble began when the GED was asked about who authorized the exercise under whatever name without the input of the National Assembly.

At this juncture, Kragba responded that he would need to clarify from his superiors, since he was barely a month in office having been appointed a couple of weeks ago.

When asked if BPE was involved in the process, its acting Director General (DG), Vincent Akpotarie denied the knowledge and participation of his agency in the proposed sale.

Kragba’s response to seek clarification from higher office however drew the ire of the Committee that called his competence to question.

The Committee regretted that it was the action of NNPC that the whole country is suffering, while noting that there was no reason for the continuation of the session since the GED is incapable of giving authoritative answers to questions thrown at him.

The Committee also wondered whether there was handover notes that the GED could refer to in response to the queries of the Committee since assumption of office.

The Committee expressed disappointment that it deferred to accept the representation of Kragba on the basis that he claimed to have the mandate of the corporation to make pronouncements on its behalf but failed to live up to the expectation of the Committee.

On being told that he was incompetent to handle the matter at hand, Kragba responded saying, “With due respect to this Honourable Committee, I was appointed into the office by Mr President who believed my competency”.

The Committee would have none of that from the GED for using such a language on the House.

Before aborting the hearing due to the shouting bout, the Committee ruled that the NNPC should stop the exercise with immediately for gross violation of the BPE Act.

Chairman of the Committee, Ahmed Yerima warned Kragba to be mindful of his choice of words before the parliament, “I am sure if Mr President reads this BPE Act, he will not be happy with what you are doing.

“We are preaching change, change in our ways of doing things for the betterment of the Country and yet we the leaders are doing things ,the other way round, impunity is still rampant, am a member of the All Progressive Congress and we promised the people real change before they gave us their votes,” he stated.

The hearing was abruptly adjourned with a caveat that the Petroleum Resources Minister, Kachikwu must appear before the Committee.

May 25, 2016
RMAFC and TSA

•Revenue commission should approach the courts for guidance

THE report that the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) has adjudged the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and the Consolidated Revenue Account unconstitutional, deserves attention from the Federal Government. After all, the RMAFC is a creation of the constitution, and under the Third Schedule, Part 1N, paragraph 32: “The commission shall have power to (a) monitor the accruals to and disbursement of revenue from the Federation Account”. So, if the commission alleges that funds meant for the Federation Account are paid into another account, such an allegation should be investigated by the National Assembly, otherwise the commission should approach the courts for an interpretation of the relevant laws, for guidance.

According to the commission, some of the offending agencies over the remittance of their income are the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) and Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC). The commission reportedly claimed to have written to the federal executive and the National Assembly to stop the unconstitutional acts. It referred to section 162 (1) and (10) of the 1999 constitution, which provides that the Federal Government shall maintain a special account to be called “the Federation Account” and which defines income to mean “any income or return accruing to or derived by the government of the federation from any source”.

Under the government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the commission was always in contention with the Federal Government over federally collected revenue and its appropriation. Similar disagreement was also prevalent in the Jonathan era. Again, the commission has now raised cases of alleged unconstitutional actions by agencies of government, over the remittance of their revenue, with the claim that some of the laws establishing the agencies are in contravention of the 1999 constitution, and referring to section 1 (3) of the constitution which forbade any such inconsistency.

In fairness to the commission, there is the need for clarification between the constitutionally provided “Federation Account”, “the Consolidated Revenue Account” and the new “Treasury Single Account”, introduced presumably to help reduce waste and corruption in our revenue accretion processes. To all intents and purposes, many Nigerians presume that the TSA is merely another nomenclature for the Federation Account, considering the clear provisions of section 162(1) of the 1999 constitution. Indeed, the presumption is that the revenue from the agencies accused by the commission of revenue diversion, actually belong to the federation, and as such their income fall within the contemplation of section 162(1) of the constitution.

While a contrary position has not been proved by these allegations, it is important that the disagreements are laid to rest. If however the parties are uncertain of the interpretation of what the law says, it may be appropriate for the RMAFC to approach the courts for interpretation. In pushing for a resolution, we are mindful that some of the disagreement between the states and the Federal Government also revolve around this issue of what constitutes the revenue belonging to the Federation Account, and what is owned by the Federal Government alone.

In the report the commission was quoted to have said: “The commission has also been discussing with some of these agencies to resolve the issues by trying to convince them to remit their collections to the Federation Account. Some of these agencies relied on the acts establishing them to retain and utilise their revenue collections, while others rely on financial regulations to remit their collections into the Consolidated Revenue Fund.”

Such rule of thumb as reflected in the statement is embarrassing, and the government of President Muhammadu Buhari should not allow that.

May 16, 2016
Privatisation not the problem with power sector – BPE DG

Mr Vincent Akpotaire, the acting Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), said on Friday that privatisation was not the problem affecting the power sector in the country.

He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday that the long-standing decay in the sector was the main cause of the present challenges facing the sector.

Akpotaire said that privatisation became the only option open to the government due to the need to have a process that would be self-sustaining and responsive and make electricity supply transparent and investment sustainable.

According to him, “Privatisation is a process, it rides on the back of sector reform and sector reform is a necessity that arises from failure of infrastructure basically.

“Privatisation is not the problem we are facing today; the problem we are facing today is getting the system that is now in place to run without glitches; to remove the bottlenecks in the system, because you are moving from one completely different system to a new one where the people take their obligations seriously.

“Power cannot be stable in this country after 40 years of decay and rot two years after privatisation.’’

Akpotaire said that the present administration had taken full charge of the situation by working out modalities to solve some of the issues in the sector.

According to him, government is taking adequate steps to ensure that the new system that is in place begins to work properly in order to improve power supply.

He advised the Federal Government to create incentives for the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to strengthen its capacity to transmit more than it was doing presently.

“Government can continue to fund the existing infrastructure, but at the same time government can encourage Public-Private Partnership in funding what was in the past called super grid.

“This supergrid could transmit up to 760 megawatts and that gives a very robust capacity to wield power, so the lost regime in transmission will drop significantly.’’

He, however, urged Nigerians to be patient with the present administration, as it is doing everything possible to improve power supply.

He also disclosed that Ntel, a new company carved out of MTEL, a subsidiary of the defunct Nigeria Telecommunications Ltd (NITEL), is in the process of rolling out new lines to the public.

According to him, that is a testimony that the guided liquidation of the government assets was properly executed.

“We are aware that the Ntel facility is about rolling out its new lines and substantial part of what they want to do is in the areas of 4G data and voice.

“Its not yet Uhuru, because they are starting out on completely new platforms.

“The old platforms of NITEL are obsolete and useless; that is the truth.

“So what they really bought was the space and a couple of the equipment that they could still transit.

“Most of what they are doing now is premised on brand new platforms that they are bringing on board to start their activities.

“We will work with them to ensure that they do get it right in the interest of deepening the telecoms space and having a Nigerian player that will be able to leapfrog the local economy into better use of data like the 4G data spectrum that we are doing currently.’’

April 8, 2016