A report by The Cable indicates that transportation Minister, Mu’azu Jaji Sambo, has stirred controversy with a last-minute attempt to terminate the boat monitoring contract procurement process in Nigeria’s four pilotage districts, which commenced in 2019.
The pilotage districts of Lagos, Warri, Bonny/Port-Harcourt, and Calabar.
The online newspaper had reported how the minister pressured the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the ministry of justice, and the presidency to terminate a procurement process and give the contract to July Seventh Ventures Limited, a company linked to a former governor of Ogun state.
The new service boat monitoring contract contracting process was kicked off by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) following the expiration of the contract it entered with maritime giant, Intels, promoted by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.
Aside from the expiration of Intels’ tenured contract, the NPA management then cited the need to break the company’s monopoly in the sector and opened up the process to interested bidders.
With the tenure of their contract about to lapse, Intels participated in the new procurement process but was disqualified after being judged to have disregarded some criteria.
In his response, Sambo blamed the report on some persons he said were “intimidated” by his achievements and denied involvement in a contract mess.
The process, however, became embroiled in an administrative dispute between the NPA and former minister of transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, who also reportedly wanted the contract awarded to Intels despite the disqualification.
Intels went to court to challenge the disqualification.
Since then, the process remained frozen, with the NPA management and transportation ministry sitting on the process despite the selection of pre-qualified companies.
Moves to terminate the process were also opposed by the pre-qualified companies and relevant government organs, who pointed to the dangers of taking the extra-legal step.
Following the stalling, President Muhammadu Buhari, in January 2022, directed that the initiated procurement should be concluded within 60 days.
The presidential directive was reaffirmed in another letter from the chief of staff to the president, Ibrahim Gambari, dated June 14, 2022.
But the minister began a fresh move to void the procurement process and re-award the contract to Intels’s despite its disqualification.
Though Sambo’s move is facing resistance from BPP and the office of the attorney-general, the minister is reportedly pushing hard for his position to scale through within the remaining five days of the administration.
On December 14, 2022, the transport minister wrote to Buhari seeking approval to direct the BPP to cancel the ongoing procurement process started and initiate a new one.
He also sought to void the open competitive bidding process and re-award the contract to Intels without following any procurement process.
Sambo, in his submission to the president, highlighted some technical flaws with the procurement process in what insiders said was an attempt to discredit the process.
But in its response, the BPP opposed the minister’s move, saying there was no basis to warrant or legitimise the outright cancellation of the procurement process.
Mamman Ahmadu, BPP’s director-general, in a letter dated March 7, 2023, explained that the process Sambo was seeking to cancel “substantially complied with the provisions of Public Procurement Act, 2007”.
Re-echoing the position expressed in Buhari’s two previous directives, the BPP DG said “considering the importance of the procurement to the operations of the NPA coupled with the revenue loss that it is meant to address there is the compelling need for the procurement process to be concluded within the shortest possible time”.
But Sambo, on May 8, 2023, wrote to Buhari to make fresh arguments for the cancellation of the stalled process. In the new correspondence, the minister asked for permission to return the contract to Intels in place of the new companies being engaged.
Sambo quoted a voided presidential directive dated January 22, 2021, where his predecessor was accused of misleading the president to approve the re-award of the contract to Intels, a position which the president has since receded based on submissions by BPP and office of the attorney-general upholding the validity of the suspended procurement process.
Insiders quoted in the report say Sambo is pushing on with the agenda with support from two of Buhari’s in-laws to “hurriedly” actualise the reversal of the process and to award the contract to INTELS barely eight days to the end of the administration.
“This could also be viewed as an affront on the incoming administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu that the Presidency is trying to empower a company where his biggest opponent owns a significant interest,” said one of the sources.
