HOW OBASANJO, ATIKU KILLED NITEL FOR MTN, BY EX-OFFICIAL

Alhaji Shehu, in an interview with the Nigerian Compass, said
that Ogundele’s claim is a rehash of an attempt by former Minister of the
Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Nasir El-Rufai, to escape responsibility
for the NITEL debacle.

El-Rufai was the helmsman of the Bureau of Public Enterprises
(BPE) which handled the sale of NITEL at the time.

Ogundele made the declaration in reaction to recent public
spat between Alhaji Abubakar and El Rufai.

His statement read in part:
“The Nigerian Newspapers, hard copies and online, and several
web blogs and social media were awash on Tuesday April 2, 2013 with reports and
comments, on the claims and counterclaims by the former Vice President of
Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Malam Nasir El Rufai the former Director
General of the BPE on who or what ran NITEL aground.

“Nigerians will not forget in a hurry that the Nigerian
Telecommunications Ltd. (NITEL) was Nigeria’s only telecommunications provider
for almost half a century and by the time it was run aground more than six
billion US Dollars that was invested in NITEL by the Nigerian tax payers
through various governments went down the drain. Since NITEL became comatose,
the Federal Government has behaved as if nothing has happened! Nigerians were
left to be entertained by two of the dramatis personae in the NITEL saga
dancing naked in the market place.

“I wish to emphasize without any fear of contradiction that
despite the irregularities that may have surrounded the appointment of Messrs.
Pentascope to manage NITEL or the competence of Pentascope to undertake such an
assignment at a point in time, Pentascope was not responsible for the
bankruptcy of NITEL as being widely orchestrated to undiscerning Nigerians and
divert attention from the real culprits, the criminal gang in the Nigerian
telecom sector.

The bankruptcy of NITEL was initiated by the criminal gang in
the Nigerian Telecommunications sector long before the Management Contract of
Pentascope to manage NITEL. Members of the criminal gang are mainly in the
Nigerian Communications Commissions (NCC) and NITEL with some of them being
failed NITEL Contractors. Their paymasters are the private telecommunications
operators especially MTN. NITEL was already on the path to financial bankruptcy
since 2001 because of the acts of commission and omission of this group.

“Professor Bajoga the former Managing Director of NITEL and I
were actually retired from service mainly because the criminal gang in the
Nigerian telecommunications sector wanted us out of the way for refusing to
play ball in allowing NITEL networks to be used free of charge by the Private
telecommunications operators the same way Nigeria Airways was destroyed when
Private Operators were introduced into that sector and used Nigerian Airways
call sign and other aviation service facilities free of charge until Nigerian
Airways went bankrupt. The NITEL saga is however more serious because the
criminal gang in the telecommunications sector knew that they were deliberately
undermining National security in the process.

“International financial institutions are aware of the way
and manner the Nigerian telecommunications criminal gang was scamming NITEL.
This was why the consortium, International Investors Limited of London (IIL)
and Transcorp had difficulties in raising funds to pay for NITEL transactions.
The irony however is that the consultant to Transcorp was the same consultant
that produced the misleading and unintelligent report for NCC equating
Interconnection as Termination for a reported fee of ten million Naira in late
1999 which formed the bedrock of the criminal gang’s scamming of NITEL.

“I was the NITEL Deputy General Manager / General Manager
(Operations) heading NITEL technical team on regulatory issues with NCC from
1994 until April 2000, I was fully aware of the criminal intent of the criminal
gang against NITEL in flagrant violation of explicit Nigerian Laws and
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Recommendations on the issue of
Interconnection. With my direct participation on the telecommunications
regulatory issue I could predict NITEL’s bankruptcy since 2001. It is therefore
morally reprehensible for anybody to blame Pentascope for an event already
preprogrammed. 

Pentascope or their sponsors merely walked into the trap. A
forensic analysis of the so-called 100 billion Naira that Pentascope is being
called to account for will be found to have been spent in part to settle the
Private Telecommunications Operators  fraudulent invoices that NITEL was
not in a position to certify albeit forced to pay against all the norms of
commercial transactions.

“The GSM operator, MTN was reported to the former President
of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki for corrupting the Nigerian Polity by Chief
Obasanjo. Of course, Thabo Mbeki insulted Nigerians and Nigeria by giving the
former President Chief Obasanjo the diplomatic cold shoulder. Unknown to
Obasanjo, at about the same time, MTN submitted a controversial bill of three
(3) billion Naira to NITEL for settlement.  NITEL correctly refused to
settle the fraudulent so-called traffic exchange bill based on call
termination. 

Lo and behold, MTN rubbed salt on injury of Nigerians with
Thabo Mbeki’s rebuff of Obasanjo’s complaints by making Nigeria’s presidency
MTN marketing and debt collecting officer! MTN routed the same bill that NITEL
refused to settle through the PRESIDENCY which promptly acted like MTN debt
collecting agency by sending the bill through the Ministry of Communications to
compel NITEL to pay. Of course NITEL staff to please “the Oga on Top” promptly
parted with three billion Naira. 

What the Presidency that should lead the nation in patriotic
example did not know was that at the time MTN submitted the questionable bill
of 3 billion Naira for NITEL to settle, MTN was using 22 E1 (2x2MB) NITEL
leased circuits to connect its Radio Base Stations in Abuja to Lagos where it
had the Mobile switching Centre (MSC) without paying a single kobo to NITEL for
those services. But NITEL provided same services to NNPC and other corporate bodies
which they were paying for.

Meanwhile, former chief executives, union and group of
retirees from the NITEL had recently risen faulted attempts by El-Rufai to deny
responsibility for the NITEL debacle.
They accused El-Rufa’i of attempting to push away the blame
for the destruction of the telecommunications monopoly from himself.

One of the former Managing Directors of MTEL, the GSM arm of
NITEL, Engr.  Kunle Bello who voluntarily resigned so he could avoid
the touted new managers, Pentascope said he foresaw the collapse of NITEL/MTEL
due to insincere and inconsistent implementation of policies by the El-Rufa’i
led BPE.

He described the Pentascope management brought in by
El-Rufa’i as an “irredeemable misfortune” upon the telecommunications
industry and an unmitigated disaster on NITEL/MTEL staff “who have been
dying one after another” due to non-payment of pensions.

Engineer Bello, an ITU telecommunications expert said
Pentascope squandered more than N100 billion of NITEL’s hard-earned money,
besides the loss of revenue without adding a single telephone line.

He challenged the nation’s judicial and executive arms of
government to rise to the occasion by going after the perpetrators of the
fraud. In a statement the group of retirees signed and issued in Abuja, they
disagreed with the claim that former Vice President  Abubakar approved the
appointment of Pentascope, the failed management consultant hired to manage
NITEL in 2003.

The former workers who said they held El-Rufa’i responsible
not only for the collapse of NITEL, but also the destruction of their careers,
said, the issue at stake was beyond the debate of who signed and who did not.
“The issue is who issued or originated the memorandum to the National Council
on Privatization (NCP)? How did El-Rufa’i, as DG BPE pick Pentascope to manage
NITEL?”

The retirees accused El-Rufa’i of misleading, not only the
National Council on Privatization, but also the entire Government of the
Federation by presenting Pentascope as a capable management company that could
turn around NITEL.

One of such ex-staff members, who spoke with reporters on
this issue, Michael Awos who put in 30 years as a technical staff beginning
with the defunct P & T said that Pentascope was brought purposely to
“siphon money and kill this organisation (NITEL) they had spent all their
lives to build.”

“He broke and twisted all the rules to make Pentascope win.
Penstascope was one and the same with El-Rufa’i. The face of Pentascope was
represented by El-Rufai’s two closest friends Mr. Hassan Musa Usman and Tijjani
Abdullahi. Pentascope in Holland was a one-man office. It had a single room at
its office. It’s Rolling Mast was on top of a Church building.

“El-Rufa’i orchestrated the fall of NITEL because he was
bitter he failed to win the bid to build its new Abuja headquarters. He
destroyed NITEL because of this and shattered our careers in the process,” the
retirees lamented.

The retirees went on to say that the true story of the
destruction of their National Carrier had been revealed in two reports by the
House of Representatives and the Senate.

Quoting from the report, the retirees said that “rather than
using Atiku as scapegoat for the collapse of NITEL to serve his hidden agenda,
the concerned group of former NITEL workers advised El-Rufa’i to be honourable
enough to accept the responsibility for railroading and blackmailing the former
NITEL board and the privatization council into approving a contract that had
short-changed Nigerians and children yet unborn.

According to these former NITEL workers, who described
themselves as the “human debris of the destruction wrought on NITEL by
El-Rufai’s selfish and callous agenda to short-change Nigerians,” the former
BPE DG should apologize to Nigerians for his misdeeds.
They recalled that in May 2003, the House of Representatives
exposed the underbelly of El-Rufai’s hypocrisy and brazen lies to mislead the
federal government and Nigerians about the Pentascope management contract.

The Committee they said, found that the evaluation of the
bids was “suspect” and that Pentascope lied on its true legal status and
origin, which the group said El-Rufa’i cleverly covered up.

Reacting resentfully at El-Rufai’s deceit, the former NITEL
workers said the House of Representatives found that Pentascope was supposedly
registered on January 1, 2002, which was a public holiday in European countries.

Despite the inaccuracies and lies by Pentascope, the group
accused El-Rufa’i of imposing the Dutch company on a hostile NITEL board, its
workers and Nigerians.

According to the group, the Pentascope misadventure led to
NITEL profits nose-diving from N15 billion in 2002 and turned it into a loss of
N19 billion in 2003.

The group, quoting the House Communications Committee report,
also said that NITEL’s turnover dropped from N53 billion to N41 billion.

Despite the dramatic drop in turnover under Pentascope
management, the group alleged that direct costs and overhead costs increased
from N21.3 billion to N26.3 billion and from N19.4 billion to N30 billion.

The NITEL former staff, therefore, advised El-Rufa’i to focus
on these issues rather than using others as a scapegoat, saying that it is not
uncommon for leaders to be misled by clever liars into signing something that
turned out to be fraudulently arranged to produce a desired outcome.

The retired NITEL workers wonder why El-Rufa’i thinks the
House of Representatives, the former NITEL board and others that exposed the
fraudulent process of handing over NITEL to Pentascope were wrong and he was
right.

Comrade Elias Kazzah, National Adviser of Senior Staff
Association of Communications, Transport and Corporations (SSACTC) and
President of the NITEL unit of the association, who spoke in the same vein,
called on El-Rufa’i to shut up on account of his mismanagement of the
PENTASCOPE transaction that led to the demise of the company.

Comrade Kazzah who spoke on behalf of the NITEL union said
El-Rufa’i’s dubious imposition of Pentascope on NITEL and Nigeria led to huge
economic losses to the economy considering the huge remittances of the national
carrier to the nation’s economy, destroyed careers of a vibrant workforce and
also posed security risks.

He said that NITEL was so commercially viable that it
contributed to NIPOST and provided support to the ECOMOG troops in Liberia and
Sierra Leone.

He recalled that the BPE under the headship of El-Rufa’i
rebuffed other options put on the table for revamping NITEL  despite
the fact that they had failed at six previous attempts at addressing the NITEL
imbroglio.

Comrade Kazzah regretted El-Rufa’i’s handling of the
controversial management contract insisting that the “coming
of  Pentascope was through the backdoor.”

He said that to demonstrate its reservation against the deal,
NITEL workers blocked the gate of Transcorp Hilton venue of the signing of the
management contract between BPE and Pentascope but that El-Rufa’i
surreptitiously smuggled the parties to the deal through the back.

He noted that Pentascope came on board with preconceived
agenda to have a run on the huge cash both local and foreign currency at the
disposal of NITEL at that time and to disorganise and frustrate the network.

Meanwhile, a former Managing Director of NITEL, Professor
Buba Bajoga who agreed to speak on record decried the destruction of NITEL as
“very painful.”

He said by the time he left the organization as its head in
2000, NITEL was a very viable commercial organization.

“We approved the payment of dividends to government and
I remember that I left N15 billion and U.S. Dollar 200 million in the coffers
of the organization,” he said.

Professor Bajoga said NITEL made more profit than most banks.
“We paid all our bills and were financing all our projects,” he added.