orphanage situation and proposed a solution. He took immediate action in support of the proposal of
our legal department, approving subsidiary legislation[62] giving me such emergency powers within
48 hours. We, therefore, legally took control of the children and their welfare under the Child Rights
Act, 2003.
Bola Onagoruwa[63] as Secretary for Social Development took charge of the situation. As a mother,
she approached the situation with uncommon passion and focus. She proceeded to draft subsidiary
legislation and guidelines on the establishment and management of orphanages, crèches and other
childcare facilities which we enacted and published in the Federal Government Gazette. We then
established a government orphanage, which the remaining 42 children were quickly moved into. We
had to rent a building, fit it out and furnish it in less than two weeks. We also got a trained child
psychologist to manage the orphanage and proceeded to remove the illegal orphanage from the face of
the earth by its demolition. We then instructed the FCT legal department to begin immediate criminal
proceedings against the Mrs. Ibe for offences under the Child Rights Act.
Clearly, if we had not come across that information and done what we did, some of those children
would have died and the rest substantially damaged. Now they are all in school, thanks to Sonia's
concern, Jimi's anger and Bola Onagoruwa's vigilance. We set up a system to take care of their
education until they get to college, if they are able. In the Jabi Orphanage, they lived as comfortably
as any middle class family with a safe place to sleep, a playground and the rest of the basics
necessary for as normal a childhood as is possible.
This was not about building infrastructure or anything like that, but it deals with the vulnerable
orphans and homeless children. It is for this reason that I am most proud of it. The fact that these
helpless children were being exploited and we did something about it is one of the few memories I
have that counterbalances all of the dark days of exile and Yar’Adua’s smear campaign. When I think
about those children, and that maybe one of those children might be the president of our country one
day, and knowing that they would not have had that chance had we not taken the actions we did, it
makes all the heartache and sleepless nights of the past 10 years worthwhile.
Water Supply
One other decision I am proud of involved finally contracting the expansion of Abuja’s water
treatment capacity. Abuja’s population had grown so fast that we had water shortages because
treatment capacity was not expanding as fast as the population was. Thus one of my most important
responsibilities was to increase the potable water supply. Contracts had been awarded to pipe the
water 75 kilometres from Gurara River in Kaduna State to Abuja since Abuja has no natural water
source. Construction of the dam and the pipe work were nearing completion, but we had not expanded
the treatment facility to deliver the water to residents. We, therefore, launched a procurement process
to build a treatment facility to increase potable water delivery capacity from that of a population of
600,000 to about 2 million. While going through the tender process, a friend - Kashim Ibrahim Imam -
approached me lobbying for an Israeli company called SCC to handle the water treatment contract.
SCC has been in Nigeria for a while and had constructed the pipeline from Gurara to Lower Usuma
Dam, among other projects.
It was both normal for the company to be interested in building the water treatment plant and not
unusual in Nigeria to ask a friend to speak to another on their behalf. Furthermore, the FCDA had
commissioned separately in 2002, an Israeli engineering consultant - Tahal Consultants - to undertake
the engineering design of the water treatment plant and associated facilities. I told Kashim the same
thing I tell everyone since my BPE years: there is very little I can do, it will be a competitive
process, bid your best price, in this case the lowest possible, as we will select the lowest price bid
consistent with technical compliance. As the tender process got underway, Atiku phoned me. This
was early in 2005 and our relationship then was not close, but I kept a civil interaction with him in
deference to his position as the vice president of the country.
“Nasir, a friend of mine needs your help.”
“What can I do, sir?”
“It is about the bid for your water treatment plant project. You know Levi has been my neighbour
in Lagos while I was still in the customs, we lived in the same block of flats.”
“Who is Levi?”
“Oh, he is the managing director and owner of SCC.”
“Oh, ok, yes, they are indeed bidding for our water treatment plant.”
“Yes, that is what I wanted to talk to you about. I would really appreciate that you do
whatever you can to ensure his company gets the contract because we are very good friends and
during the Abacha period, our difficult times, he really was very helpful to me.”
“Ok sir, but you know this will be a competitive bid process and we have a shortlist of six or
seven companies that have been pre-qualified and any one of the companies can do the job. So it
just really boils down to a mix of price and completion period. You know me, sir. Please just tell
them to give the best possible price. That is the only way I can be of help.”
By then, the competitive bidding and evaluation system I had designed for the FCT Administration
was pretty much tamper-proof. Shortly after, Levi, the SCC CEO, came to see me at Atiku’s urging. I
gave him the same advice I give everyone. They were doing other work for us anyway, and they had
already proven themselves as competent engineering contractors, so there was no issue about their
qualification. I told him to just put out the best price they could. He thanked me for meeting him and
said he would do his best. But my concerns were raised when I escorted him out of my residence to
his car. He whispered that they would pay me 5% of whatever they bid. I advised him to discount his
bid by the same percentage and he drove off, looking a bit perplexed.
Our initial specification was to build a 10,000 cubic metre per hour treatment plant that could be
expanded to 20,000 in the near future. We received a bid from a British company called Biwater for
about 8 billion naira. The Atiku-friendly company, SCC, bid about 12 billion for the same plant. A
German company, Julius Berger, bid 18 billion, and other bidders' prices came in between. We
opened the bids publicly, announced the prices, and referred the bid documents to the consulting
engineers and an FCT review committee for evaluation. That was when the games really started.
The first thing the consulting engineers did was to disqualify the lowest bid as too low to be
realistically achievable. The consultants were supposed to give the engineers’ estimate which would
be the basis for evaluating the bids and they came up with 14 billion as the estimate for the 10,000
cubic metres per hour plant. I suspect the two Israeli companies - SCC and Tahal –probably agreed
beforehand what the consultant estimate would be so that SCC could come in just under it. I got the
preliminary report disqualifying Biwater and I immediately wrote back. As a one-time consulting
quantity surveyor, I knew how to do this bid evaluation stuff,
and I directed that since all the bidders
had been pre-qualified for technical competence, no bid could be disqualified or precluded from
detailed evaluation. I instructed that the consulting engineer should just evaluate the submitted bids
for technical compliance and bring them to the FCT Management Committee. I requested to meet with
the consulting engineer to justify his estimate of 14 billion naira by providing a breakdown backed by
submitting fully-priced bills of quantities.
The consultant was clearly colluding with SCC and was feeding them information. When I responded
to the attempted disqualification, the consultant must have informed SCC about the step I had taken
and encouraged SCC to write a petition to the president that I was interfering with the 'technical
evaluation process'. SCC alleged that I did not want the technical people to do their jobs and I had a
pecuniary interest in the bid outcome. It did not occur to them that a bidder should not have such
information. This petition they filed through Atiku to bring to President Obasanjo, which he did.
Obasanjo, of course, called me.
“Minister, do you have a water project in your budget this year?”
“Yes sir.”
“So, has it been awarded?”
“No, it is still being evaluated by the consulting engineers. I have not received the appraisal
report yet.”
Obasanjo was a little surprised.
“So you do not know how the evaluation is going?”
“I do not have anything conclusive yet.”
“Ok then, take this petition.” He gave me the petition. “Take it and study it, and do nothing for
now. Just for information” So I took it and I glanced through and said:
“Mr. President, you know, we have a low bid of about seven to eight billion naira by a reputable
company and we have a high bid of 18 billion naira. This is the range of bids we have. We have
our consultant's estimate coming in between and I just want to consider everything. I do not want
to declare any price as unfit. I want to consider everything.”
After all, FCT was footing the bill.
“Seven billion and eighteen?” asked the president.
“Well that is the range. I just do not want the engineers disqualifying anyone and pushing the price
up. I just said I wanted every bid evaluated.”
“Oh – and that is why they are petitioning against you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Mr. President, let’s wait for the evaluation to be completed and I will brief you in full.”
Obasanjo did not tell me who brought the petition to him, but I already knew the moment I saw it that
it would be either Kashim Imam or Atiku Abubakar, as both had access to him.
“Let us not comment until we receive the report, Mr. President. I would like to respond to this but
I can’t because the process is not yet done. When it is done, I will give you a comprehensive
response and a background briefing because I have a feeling I know where this is coming from.”
Obasanjo agreed. Shortly after, I received the bids evaluation report, which suggested that since the
engineers’ estimate was ₦ 14 billion and Biwater was bidding at about half that amount, the engineer
did not believe Biwater could do it so cheaply, even using an alternative treatment technology, and
should therefore be disqualified. The report recommended SCC for the award of the contract. I
reviewed the report, looked at the detailed pricing structure and technologies offered and decided to
modify the entire procurement outcome. I instructed FCDA to request the consulting engineer to direct
all the bidders to submit an alternative offer for a 20,000 cubic metre per hour plant. Since we had
budgeted ₦ 12 billion, and we had a bid for 10,000 at seven to eight billion naira, I thought maybe we
could get 20,000m3 per hour at or near 12 billion naira. We also requested that the bidders should
include proposals for contractor financing of a portion of the project cost, just in case oil prices
suddenly dropped and our short-term liquidity dried up.
A week later, the bids came back and Biwater bid to double the capacity at about 11 billion naira,
with some omissions and detailed design services totalling another three billion naira. SCC had
moved to something like 18 billion naira. At these price ranges, the consulting engineer could not
disqualify any bids, but still submitted a report, supported by the FCDA in-house evaluation team,
that SCC should be awarded the contract at a price about four billion naira higher than Biwater! For
the first time since 1998, I was challenged to be a quantity surveyor all over. I personally took the bid
documents and evaluation reports and wrote line by line queries, accompanied by hard, detailed
questions. By the time the queries list got to the evaluation team, they realized that this minister knew
the game. The final report came back recommending Biwater at the lowest bid, 14.3 billion naira, for
a water treatment plant with a capacity of 20,000 cubic metres per hour that would adequately supply
two million inhabitants of FCT with potable water. We got twice the capacity at a little above our
initial budget with an offer of financing if we met certain conditions.
The moment I sent back my queries of the internal evaluation report, a second petition went to the
president, this time, accusing me of changing the specifications, shifting the goalposts, being
unprofessional, unfair and unrealistic and, most critically, that this sort of plant and the treatment
technology proposed by Biwater has never been built anywhere in the world.
Obasanjo sent it to me with a cover letter this time requesting for an explanation, in writing. As it
turned out, about a year earlier I had visited Malaysia and went to Kuala Lumpur for a totally
different reason - to visit their Abuja-like capital under construction - Putrajaya and their technology
park, Cyberjaya - but part of that trip involved inspecting the largest water treatment plant in the
world at the time, more than 30 kilometres from the city, on the recommendations of our High
Commission there. It was built by Biwater Malaysia, using that very same filtration technology that
would be proposed for Abuja. So when Obasanjo received my response and invited me for a final,
face-to-face briefing – Obasanjo studied civil engineering by the way, so he knew the technical issues
pretty well – I started from the beginning, told him about Kashim and Atiku and the tendering process,
all the issues and I explained all the technical issues and he understood clearly.
“But we now have this,” I said. “We can get twice the capacity we planned for the same amount
we would have paid SCC, and just a little over our initial budget, Mr. President. These SCC guys
just wanted to rip us off. So subject to your approval, I intend to fire the Israeli consultants
because they were clearly not working for us, they were working for SCC. I propose to appoint
the French engineering consultant supervising the construction of the Gurara dam to supervise the
water treatment contract.”
Obasanjo understood and agreed to all of it, approving my recommendations a week later which were
then subsequently ratified by the Federal Executive Council. We announced the award of the contract
to Biwater on 14th July, 2005 and works started on 5th of August, 2005. The contract was due for
completion by August
2007. It was at that point that Obasanjo said, “Do you know who was bringing
me those petitions?”
“Either Kashim Imam or VP, sir.”
“Yes, it was Atiku.”
I was incensed. On my way home that night, I kept thinking and wondering why Atiku did these nasty
things to me. Right from my days in the BPE, he had actively undermined me and accused me of
inappropriate behaviour simply to get contracts for his friends – Ericsson in BPE and now SCC in the
FCTA. What I was angry about was the ease with which he fabricated fiction and falsehood against
me once I refuse to violate procurement rules and regulations. What wrong had I done him?
It was at this point that I decided that I have had enough of Atiku's games at my expense, starting from
the NITEL GSM tender while I was in BPE. I vowed that, henceforth, I would fight his smear
attempts aggressively. But I did not need to, as it turned out. Atiku’s comeuppance hardly needed my
involvement.
Obasanjo, Atiku and the PTDF saga
Perhaps the falling out between Obasanjo and Atiku became public knowledge in September 2006
when what came to be known as the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) saga
dominated media headlines. The whole affair started innocuously when the FBI raided the home of
US Congressman William Jefferson, in May 2006, and found $100,000 cash stashed in a freezer, plus
certain documents pointing to some business deals in Nigeria.
Under the terms of a mutual legal assistance treaty subsisting between the governments of the USA
and Nigeria, the US Department of Justice requested the EFCC to assist the US Attorney’s Office and
The Accidental Public Servant Page 36
