It is bewildering that Uba Sani, who claims to
be an intellectual, would write that a private company that has a contract with
a government agency should be governed by other policies other than the
contract legally entered into by both parties.
Because, when shorn of all its highfaluting
grammar and sycophantic praise singing of Hadiza Bala Usman, the bottom line of
Uba Sani’s argument is that an agency that entered into a legally binding
agreement can back out of that agreement on the strength of policy.
Think what this would do to foreign investment
inflow into Nigeria. Could Uba Sani have inadvertently revealed the reason why
Nigeria moved from being the number one recipient of Foreign Direct Investment
in Africa in 2013, according the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), to not even featuring in the top 10 in 2017?
The fact remains that, as the Supreme Court
has made clear, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is the
only law that overrides all other laws, thus private and public contracts that
do not violate the constitution should be honoured by both parties.
That Uba Sani is a spin doctor should not
immediately render him suspect. A man must eat and however he plies his trade,
as long as it is not illegal, then he is to be tolerated.
However, for Uba Sani to stand truth on its
head the way he did in his fawning piece “Hadiza Bala Usman and the Road Less
Travelled” is quite pitiable. Mr. Sani forgets that Google allows even children
to bust lies instantaneously.
For one, how does Sani reconcile his words to
the effect that “the decision of the federal government to terminate a boat
pilotage agreement between the Nigerian Ports Authority and Integrated
Logistics Services Limited (INTELS) is highly commendable and should be lauded
and regarded by all well-meaning Nigerians” and his praise that “It is most
gratifying that Hadiza Usman’s efforts are speedily paying off and this much is
reflected in the NPA posting a revenue of N118 billion in the first quarter of
2017 alone”?
Who helped the Nigerian Ports Authority
generate the N118 billion revenue that it posted in the first quarter of 2017,
if not INTELS that Sani now pooh-poohs?
More than 50 percent of that amount was
generated by INTELS. So even by Sani’s mercantile arguments, INTELS should be
praised for helping the NPA overshoot its targets.
Sani praises Ms. Usman for “freeing up of the
nation’s seaports from the suffocating grip (as well as the whims and caprices)
of a few powerful operators who have been enjoying operational monopoly under
the less than transparent Exclusive Concession Agreement.”
Here Sani, like most hatchet writers,
contradicts himself in his hurry to spin a tale that will delight his puppet
masters.
He talks about an allegedly “less than
transparent Exclusive Concession Agreement”. Here, Sani betrays the fact that
he knows that there is indeed an ‘AGREEMENT’ between INTELS and the Nigerian
Ports Authority.
An agreement is defined by the Merriam Webster
dictionary as a contract duly executed and legally binding.
So if there is a legally binding agreement and
one party feels that the agreement is not transparent, then why did he or it
enter into the agreement in the first place? And if he or it wants to leave
that agreement then why not follow the laid down procedure of doing so, instead
of unilaterally and illegally canceling it?
You see, Mr. Uba Sani has done Ms. Usman a
great disservice by projecting her as a budding dictator without regard to due
process.
Then the pièce de résistance in Uba Sani’s
folly comes when he says that “the boat pilotage agreement between the NPA and
INTELS, which was signed in 2010 for a validity period of 10 years, has been
adjudged as illegal by no less a person than the attorney general of the
federation.”
Are we referring to the same attorney general
of the federation who wrote a memo ordering the Federal Civil Service
Commission to reinstate the infamous Abdulrasheed Maina of the pension fraud
scheme?
For one, the attorney general of the
federation is not a court of competent jurisdiction and has no power to
“adjudged as illegal” anything!
The highest he can do is to opine, and if his
opinion on Maina is anything to go by, I would not give much weight to anything
he opines about.
Moreover, the attorney general of the
federation is the official lawyer to the government and the same government is
a party to a disagreement with INTELS. It runs contrary to EVERY legal system
on earth for a person to be a judge in his/her own case!
As for the Treasury Single Account, trite
wisdom indicates that such a policy should be binding on only ministries,
departments and agencies, and not on private concerns.
But even this is a moot point because INTELS
has bent over backwards to accommodate the government by stating publicly
through its chairman that it is prepared to abide by the TSA policy.
And finally, when Mr. Sani says “Facts making
the rounds have shown that between January 2010 and September 2016, INTELS
collected about $1.295 billion under the agreement. Out of this amount, INTELS
remitted only $343.35 million to the NPA”, I challenge him to produce such
‘facts’
In these days of ‘alternative facts’, I will
not be surprised if Uba Sani’s ‘facts’ are derived from a beer parlour or a
mammy market.
The truth is that Mr. Sani lied with that
preposterous claim and going by his antecedents, it will not be the first time
he is engaging in lying.
My advise to Uba Sani is that next time you
are sent on a slave’s errand, try to do it like a freeborn.
Abdullahi Umar writes from Kaduna.
Source: Premium Times
