El-Rufai and the Pentascope Scandal

In a responsible democracy, the recent revelations about the terrible scandal at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) under the stewardship of an Obasanjo sidekick called El-Rufai would have provoked a public outcry. The disaster involving what amounts to an elaborate scam by a strange foreign outfit – Pentascope – and its Nigerian collaborators to bilk the country in a heist worth millions of dollars would have seen someone taking responsibility for that monumental failure. As director -general and one of the key figures responsible for the decision to hire an obviously unqualified company to supposedly manage the affairs of a strategic national parastatal, El-Rufai should have tendered his resignation and should subsequently have been made to pay for such an insouciant dereliction of duty. Instead of showing contrition, what Nigerians have gotten from this unabashed bootlicker of the current tyrant in Abuja is a nauseating display of braggadocio coupled with one of the most ludicrous rationalizations ever tendered by a government agent.

In his curious testimony before the House of Representatives, Obasanjo’s minister in charge of the national capital territory did glibly declare that as the person in charge of the BPE at the time, he was aware of the mediocrity of the Dutch outfit called Pentascope and yet proceeded to award it one of the most lucrative management contracts in Nigerian history. And what is the justification advanced by the former director-general? That there was no single Nigerian capable of managing the affairs of NITEL! And to think that Mallam Nasir el-Rufai is said to be one of the rare bright spots of Obasanjo's fumbling regime! Very sad and pathetic indeed! Please listen to his weird explanation:

"I have no regrets whatsoever and I owe no one any apology over the Pentascope management contract agreement. I did my best and took the best decisions among all available options then…We took risks hoping for the best and mind you, we did not have a choice between black and white but between shades of grey. It was based on trial and error”. (Thisday Online, March 04, 2005). Incredible! What a piece of egregious rant! It is simply preposterous that minister El-Rufai has chosen to view his bumbling tentativeness in the BPE scandal as a virtue of sorts. Most objective observers should consider the man’s self-confessed tentativeness as indicative of something much more sinister.
How can a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria make such an unbelievably fatuous statement and still expect to be spared the rod? For his infant-like amateurism in the Pentascope affair, El-RufaiI probably deserves some lashes of the cane. Instead of showing remorse for his proven incompetence which is directly responsible for the management scam at NITEL, El-Rufai seems to be adding insult to injury. His cavalier attitude on an issue of this significance should be considered as a serious self-indictment. But the whole “trial and error” argument does also expose the profound levity with which critical decisions involving the Obasanjo regime’s economic policy are treated by those responsible for its implementation. And to think that with the funds at its disposal, the BPE could not hire professionals with a proven track record to handle the affairs of NITEL!
This scandal involving NITEL has once more exposed the bogus claim by the Obasanjo regime that it is running a transparent and responsible government. If the regime were a responsible one, it would have fired El-Rifai instead of needlessly compounding the woes of Nigerian citizens by seeking to prolong his stay in public service with the offer of a ministerial assignment. Another aspect of this sordid affair is the fact that it is the expression of Baba Iyabo's (and to some extent the average Nigerian pol's) uncritical deference to anything Western or foreign - an inferiority complex that makes it possible for scam artists of all hues and shades to view Nigeria as a haven for get-rich-quick schemes that can only be contemplated for our kind of society.

At a personal level of significance, the scandal has further damaged the reputation of El-Rufai as a trust-worthy technocrat. El-Rufai has over the last couple of years shown by his tendency to grand-stand that he lacks the type of circumspection and discipline required for his official position. His rabble-rousing antics have severally portrayed him as intemperate and concerned more with power than with the public good. Citizens remember vividly his rabid attack against a fellow Nigerian living in the U.K. Minister El-Rufai’s grievance against this individual had to do with the fact that the latter was one of the people expressing systematic opposition to the “dollarized salaries” scheme by El-Rufai’s political master, Obasanjo. And, of course, Nigerians are not soon to forget how, when called upon to publicly defend his claim that some National Assembly members had asked him for a bribe to favour his confirmation as minister, El-Rufai avoided any offer of a concrete proof and instead sought refuge in the familiar accoutrement of a loyal and rabid party apparatchik. He almost sobbed as he professed his love for his benefactor, the imperial president of Nigeria. In an incoherent show of zealotry, he told a bewildered Nigerian nation how he was ready to lay down his life for Obasanjo! It was that surreal. It was as if the mere mention of his loyalty to Baba was evidence enough in his allegation against the senators. This is scary. It is doubtful that a technocrat on whom millions of fellow citizens are being told to count can be trusted to make sound official decisions with such display of whimpering subservience bordering on fanaticism.

Nigerians should be worried, and rightly so, about the BPE’s operations in general and not just under the El-Rufai tenure. Today, the BPE evokes the image of sleaze and the illegal transfer of public-owned assets into private hands, with senior members of the regime, their family members and allies alike considered as the main beneficiaries. A few weeks ago, in a futile bid to dampen public concern regarding allegations that he is corruptly enriching himself by abusing his status as the president’s son, Gbenga Obasanjo did say that Nigerians should worry more about those who are busy acquiring public enterprises in the name of the government’s privatization policy. What the Obasanjo scion seemed to be doing in his reaction is remind us that he is not the only one benefiting from the “largesse” being dolled out to members of the regime’s political clan. Gbenga Obasanjo’s comments can thus be said to constitute a rare public admission - albeit an inadvertent one - by an insider as to the failure of his father’s economic policy the main plank of which is said to be the privatization scheme.

Apart from the Pentascope management scam, another scandal involving the BPE when El-Rufai was director-general is the one having to do with the Privatisation Shares Purchase Loan Scheme (PSPLS). This is supposed to be a federal government initiative “to enable low income earning Nigerians to participate in the government’s privatisation scheme by offering them credit”. Like in the Pentascope scandal, large sums of public money have been lost, thanks to a dubious “management” contract in the case of the PSPLS management scheme. This is yet another example of the large-scale fleecing of Nigeria one has witnessed since 1999. In the PSPLS management contract controversy, the BPE reportedly paid $41 million to Denham Management Limited – another foreign outfit with local collaborators apparently acting as the brains behind the scheme– as a consultant between 2000 and 2003. Though launched on May 06, 2003, the loans scheme is yet to take off and there is very little on the ground to justify the amount spent by the BPE on the ‘management’ contract awarded to Denham. In his charge to the House of Representatives Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation which is carrying out an investigation into the management scandal, the Speaker, Alhaji Masari, observed: “…The House is aware that several million dollars were paid for consultancy…There is nothing to show on ground about the scheme except in papers. The Committee will therefore look into the propriety of the award of contracts and whether due process was followed”.

Until it was recently jolted from its slumber, thanks in part to the public outcry regarding some of the most brazenly outrageous activities of the regime in Abuja, the Nigerian media had tended to treat the current Obasanjo regime with kid gloves. And nowhere is this meek coverage of the executive arm of government more glaring than in the handling of El-Rufai by the press. Now that the House of Representatives has done what is expected of it and sanctioned El-Rufai because of his gross dereliction of duty in the Pentascope affair, it is hoped that the Nigerian press will continue to focus on this important issue. The call by the honourable members of the National Assembly for El-Rufai to be sacked and remain banned from holding public office should be viewed with the keen attention it deserves if the struggle to install democracy and transparency as a way of life in Nigeria is to be taken seriously. In their resolution, the members of the House of Representatives noted, inter alia:
"The act of subterfuge and executive rascality perpetrated by the former DG of BPE, Mallam el-Rufai in positioning Pentascope to squander over N100 billion of taxpayers money should not be left unpunished. The committee recommends that he should be banned from holding any public office and made to face the relevant laws” (NewAge Online, Wed., May 25, 2005).

Pentascope should be situated at the heart of a truly serious anti-corruption campaign. This means that all those involved in this and similar scandals must be made to account for their sins against the people of Nigeria. The EFCC in particular should take a cue from the National Assembly and seek the prosecution of all those suspected of involvement in the Pentascope scam. A main purpose of such an action should be the recovery of all ill-gotten money. The EFCC cannot afford to be seen as ignoring this scandal in the manner of the regime’s godfathers. The immediate successor to El-Rufai at the BPE, Dr. Julius Bala, was unceremoniously relieved of his post, supposedly for embarrassing the Obasanjo regime with his open approach and especially his willingness to cooperate with the National Assembly investigation into the Pentascope scandal. The shabby treatment meted out to Dr. Bala is reminiscent of the disgrace inflicted on the former Acting Auditor-General, Chief Vincent Azie, by the regime on account of the fact that he dared tell the world that rampant corruption was taking place within the federal government. A regime which on the one hand wants to be seen as fighting corruption and on the other, is desperate to conceal its sordid track record has a serious credibility problem to contend with. Nigerians should demand for greater accountability from Obasanjo and his subalterns. There should be neither sacred cows nor ‘no-go areas’’ in the fight against corruption. Mallam Nasir el-Rufai’s role in the Pentascope scandal is as contemptible as the swindle which has seen public funds re-routed into a so-called Obasanjo “presidential library” fund. Like his political master, El-Rufai has lost any moral claim to continue to act on behalf of the citizenry. He should resign from the federal cabinet if he is imbued with a sense of integrity.

Aonduna Tondu

New York

E-mail: tondua@yahoo.com