Nasir el-Rufai, former BPE DG
Former Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Dr. Julius J. Bala, Thursday described some media reports allegedly credited to former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, while addressing the Senate ad hoc Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation at the National Assembly, as disparaging and malicious to his person.
el-Rufai was also a former Director General of the BPE.
In a statement Thursday, Bala said it was untrue that he was appointed as a green horn to head the BPE in July 2003, stating that he had already acquired cognate experience both within and outside the job to enable him pilot the affairs of the parastatal.
The former BPE boss, who said he was, already consulting with his lawyers to consider legal actions over the reports, said: “Contrary to insinuations, I was not brought from the outside and made the DG of BPE in 2003 because I had worked at the Bureau for five years (1992 to 1997) first as Special Assistant to the late Dr. Hamza Zayyad, the then Chairman of the Technical Committee for Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC)-progenitor of the BPE-and later (from 1993) as Director for Research and Publications at the BPE.”
“I was very knowledgeable on the affairs of the BPE at the time of my appointment as DG of BPE, apart from my academic and practical experience on privatisation, given my doctoral degree work on privatisation and involvement with privatisation implementation in Japan from 1984 to 1990,” he said.
Bala further clarified that he, “was never at any point in time investigated for corrupt practices or any other misconduct for that matter while he was at the BPE or at any other time in my private and professional life.”
“I was never fired from the BPE at any point in time and only left in 1997 following the request for my deployment to the Vision 2010 Secretariat by the Presidency. In 1999, I was employed as a member of the start-up management team to establish the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), as Director for Investment Promotion and Investors Services, then the key Department in the Commission. I was at NIPC until my appointment as DG at BPE in July 2003,” he stated.
Continuing, he stressed that: “While at the BPE, he did not promote employees without recourse to due process as implied in reports by the earlier mentioned national dailies, but embarked on a much needed restructuring of the management at BPE, which was highly commended by the World Bank in its Mid Term Review of activities at BPE from mid-2003 to 2004.”
The former Director General of BPE stated that: “Within months of my taking over the reins at the BPE, the bureau recovered significantly from years of maladministration that was attested to in the 2003 Mid Term Review of the BPE by the World Bank.”
“In reviewing activities during the first year of my tenure at the BPE, the World Bank’s Mid Term Review for 2004 had stated that “Over the past few months, the BPE has achieved remarkable progress to address major shortcomings and recovered from previous years of underperformance…It (BPE) also strengthened its internal organisation to allow more efficient and timely planning, accounting and reporting on its activities in the future. Notwithstanding the challenges, BPE is now on track to achieve satisfactory performance…”
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
I do not know why the need to get a lawyer of solicitors. El-rufai only responded to the questions he was asked. Bala is free to do the same. If all he claimed was true then what happened to the BPE? Where and when did things go wrong. I think he should request an audience with the panel and say his own side of the story.
ReplyDelete