March 12, 2006
Here are the details of how former Director-General of the Bureau of Public
Enterprises and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai and PricewaterhouseCooper dubiously awarded the contract to manage NITEL to
Pentascope International and made Nigeria to lose over N100 billion.
In a crowd of the physically endowed, Nasir el-Rufai, erstwhile Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, and incumbent Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, will be as conspicuous as the squirrel is in the Animal Kingdom. Barely five foot six and so frail of frame, el-Rufai is, however, adequately compensated upstairs with outstanding intellect and generally, with a constitution so steely it sometimes borders on arrogance.
On 18 March 2003, that latter quality surged to the fore and literally tore to shreds a vital document that could well have saved the nation the sum of N100 billion lost to a most dubious management contract. The message in the document, from Dr. Haliru Bello, then Minister of Communications and titled, “NITEL Management Contract Signing Ceremony,” was terse but instructively frank. “In view of the prevailing circumstances surrounding the Management Contract,” it read, “you are advised to halt the signing ceremony scheduled for today, 18th March 2003, until further notice.” The letter was signed by Engineer G.O Asiegbu, permanent secretary of the Communications Ministry for the minister.
Inside the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, where the signing ceremony was holding, Dr. Anaze Chinwuba, then chairman of the NITEL Board of
Directors, who received the message, drew el-Rufai’s attention to it. But, as Chinwuba told a two-day public hearing organized in February 2005 by the House of Representatives Committee on Communication on the management contract, el-Rufai flew off the handle when he saw the directive to stop the signing. According to
Chinwuba, the FCT minister retorted that he would not take directives from permanent secretaries, as he was also one.
With that arrogant disposition and some strokes of the pen, the BPE committed the
Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, NITEL, into the hands of a hangman. As el-Rufai himself told the hearing, he was already fixated on giving away the management of NITEL to Pentascope International, an emergency vehicle that was later discovered to be unqualified in all ramifications, to manage the parastatal.
If he would be believed, he was doing it innocently. The Minister’s excuse was his infuriation at the couple of delays that the signing of the contract had suffered, and he was eager to prise the operations of ailing NITEL away from the leprous fingers of the public service and place them in the competent, reliable grasp of a private manager. In his judgement and that of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, PWC, BPE’s Adviser, that manager was Pentascope.
How competent, honest and reliable Pentascope was would manifest within a year after it sank its teeth into NITEL. Between April 2003 and March 2004, Pentascope had squandered a gain of N15 billion which it inherited to record a loss of N19.15 billion. Turnover had also dropped to N41 billion from N53 billion. Even as revenue generation was taking a flight, el-Rufai’s brilliant managers were redefining prudence, as direct cost and overheads spiralled from N21.3 billion and N19.4 billion respectively, to N26.3 billion and N30 billion.
Pentascope’s performance could not have been otherwise, considering its unimpressive financial, managerial and professional pedigree. The Dutch firm was only three months old when the BPE advertised for Expressions of Interest to manage NITEL. A small consulting company, rather than an active telecoms operator,
Pentascope was registered on, of all days, 1 January 2002, which was a public holiday worldwide, with a workforce of only eight persons, including its janitor.
It was not even registered in Nigeria to do business, as required by the Companies and Allied Matters Act. Both Professor Augustine Odinma, internationally renowned telecoms consultant, and the House of Representatives Communications Committee wondered how Pentascope got to be favoured by PWC and the BPE as the management contractor for NITEL, as the firm did not meet any of the criteria the Bureau listed in its advertisement. The pre-qualification criteria demanded that “Interested managers MUST be international telecommunications operators and MUST demonstrate, one, evidence of having installed and managed at least a million telephones; two, a successful track record of expanding a telecommunications network in a developing country; and three, sufficient management resources to grow NITEL and enhance shareholder value.
Unless the advertisement was sheer window dressing, what the BPE set out to do was unambiguous. It was looking for a telecoms operator of international standing, with outstanding track records. From the beginning, the BPE appreciated that “for any telecoms operator to be qualified to manage NITEL, it must demonstrate that it possesses the above mentioned criteria,” as noted by the House committee.
Clearly, Pentascope did not meet any of the requirements. At the hearing, the BPE and PWC engaged in buck-passing on who gave the Dutch firm the clean health bill that secured it the NITEL deal. Under oath at the public hearing, the Managing
Director of PWC, Mr. Ken Igbokwe said services of the consulting firm to the BPE were restricted to financial advisory. But el-Rufai clarified that the PWC was involved in the entire selection process. PWC, it was, that assisted the BPE in evaluating and short listing the initial 14 companies that applied to nine. The two bodies subsequently invited the nine companies to submit managerial, technical and financial bids. Of the nine, four were disqualified.
After a purported due diligence process and review of the five bids, PWC narrowed the list down to three. These are African Access/Lucent, which demanded $230 million to turn NITEL around and was awarded 56.8 points; BNSL/TCIL, which charged
$35 million to do the job for three years and was scored 71.5 points; and Pentascope, which charged $45 million to execute the contract over the same period and was given 75.5 points. Pentascope’s high scores were hinged mainly on one factor: It claimed a working agreement with KPN, the Netherlands leading telecoms company. During evaluation, PWC and the BPE would be expected to have conducted extensive investigations of Pentascope’s claims and verification of the documents it submitted. To hoodwink stakeholders, especially the NITEL board of directors and the National Council on Privatization, NCP, before the management contract was signed, the two buddies (BPE and PWC) submitted that Pentascope was, until 2002, owned by KPN. “Pentascope,” PWC and BPE told the NITEL board and the NCP, “had provided evidence of KPN’s commitment to continue to provide them with support and technical assistance as required.”
However, as was later exposed, these claims were gross misrepresentations willfully fabricated to mislead the NITEL board, the NCP, the federal government and inquisitive stakeholders. Pentascope was never owned by KPN. On the contrary, the former was only a supplier to the latter. Odinma, who consults for the House Communication Committee and whose dogged probing unearthed some of the malpractices that attended the Pentascope scam, explained that the firm, being a “type II consultant, is a stand-alone company, with limited consultancy skills and liability.” Interpreted, Pentascope is unsuitable for full-scale management of large telecommunication companies like NITEL.
How PWC and the BPE did not knock off Pentascope’s claim at the evaluation stage, only officials of the two bodies can explain. At the public hearing in February last year, the House committee members and participants drilled PWC’s Igbokwe and
Nick Allen, one of the company’s directors, on the criteria that informed the choice of Pentascope as the preferred management contractor and on the authenticity of the documents it submitted for the evaluation. A member asked Igbokwe whether
Pentascope, which PWC recommended, had ever installed a million lines in any developing country or has any track record of financial ability as strictly demanded by the PBE advert.
The PWC chief responded that applications were considered on the basis of consortium or technical partnership, rather than solo qualifications. PWC, Igbokwe said, believed that Pentascope was affiliated with KPN. Not satisfied with Igbokwe’s response, chairman of the hearing, Hon. Yemi Akodare, requested for clarification. He told Igbokwe: “Let me try and simplify this issue. The issue is that Pentascope International, which won the bid, is not a telecoms operator. It is a consulting firm. The first point that we actually wanted you to clear here is this. In this publication, we were looking for an International Telecommunications Operator, and when you talk of an International Telecommunications Operator, a consulting firm is here bidding. Do you see that consulting firm qualifying in the bid?” A flummoxed Igbokwe, rather than answer the question himself, beckoned on Allen to confront the legislators.
The PWC director stated that organizations that undertake telecommunications management contracts, whether in Africa or elsewhere, only need to be associated with large telecoms companies. He cited Pentascope as an example. “What we expected was the kind of organization that came forward. But we were looking for who was behind them, who they were affiliated with and also the capabilities of the people that they were putting forward,” Allen said. The legislators further stretched Igbokwe and Allen in the question-and-answer session.
The Chairman: PricewaterhouseCoopers. That is a big name and full of integrity, is it not? Based on whatever documents that Pentascope presented, what was the basis of your assessment or evaluation of these documents? How much diligence work did you do to verify on ground, for example, the authenticity of the kinds of documents or claims that Pentascope made to you as PricewaterhouseCoopers?
Mr. Nick Allen: It is not typically part of the role of the financial adviser to do that and it was not in the scope of work we do for BPE. I have seen circumstances where financial advisers have been asked to do that if circumstances suggest it appropriate but in this situation, it was not considered.
Question from A Hon. Member: If I heard you well, you said that it was not within your scope of job. Is that what you said?
Mr. Nick Allen: Your original question was whether we carried out detailed diligence on the bidders and I am saying that it was not part of our scope of work.
A Hon. Member: If that is not within your scope of work, how are you going to analyse it and how are you going to advise BPE? BPE is about selling the first carrier of Nigeria. That is NITEL. If you feel that as financial advisers it is not your duty to do the due diligence, then what is your job?
Mr. Nick Allen: Our job is to support BPE, consistent with the terms of reference as set out for us, which did not include detailed due diligence on the bidders.
A Hon. Member: I want to refer you to your document here. Page 19, your rating of
Pentascope. There is a statement there, “sound technical.” What do you mean by sound technical? How did you come out with that conclusion that Pentascope is sound technical?
The Chairman: PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is like you are having problems answering some of these questions?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: He asked us a question and we do not know the document that he was referring to.
The Chairman: But these are the documents that you presented to us. You brought these documents to us yesterday and I am sure that definitely, you must have looked
at these documents.
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: He just said sound technical, page 19, and we do not have page 19, so we need to find out what page it is and try and respond to you.
Mr. Nick Allen: We have found the reference, and the document that you were referring to was a presentation made to the NITEL Board which attempted to capture the results of the evaluation of the documents that had been submitted by the bidders, their proposals for managing NITEL. That was a process that involved a number of people both from BPE and ourselves reviewing the documents and evaluating them against such detailed evaluation criteria that had been agreed at the beginning of the process. On the basis of that, Pentascope scored very highly.
The Chairman: They asked you if you did a due diligence in respect of this presentation that was given to you by these companies. It is just for you to say that yes, we did our due diligence and we confirmed all the presentations that they did, or that we did not.
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: With respect to the question on “sound technical,” what it actually said on this document is sound technical and organizational proposals.
Remember that part of the process that we are evaluating these bidders for is what they plan to do and how they plan to do it. What this is referring to, I believe, is that they have strong technical proposal for what they are going to do when they get into NITEL...
Whereas the relationship between Pentascope and KPN is by Technical Support
Agreement that they have – (interruptions)
The Chairman: Can you clear that point when you talk about Technical Support Agreement? Did you by any chance see any Technical Support Agreement?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: I believe that there was and it was included in the Management Contract binding them and their affiliates.
The Chairman: Did you see that document and will you be able to produce a copy of that document?
Mr. Nick Allen: Yes, and as Ken was saying, it is part of the NITEL Management Contract.
The Chairman: This is the Management Contract here. Can you please give it to him and let him see if he can bring it for us. (Passes the document to Mr. Nick Allen)
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: Mr. Chairman, if you remember the note that I sent to you to forward these documents, I was basically saying to you that these are copies of documents that BPE gave to us. We know that this was referred to in this document; they are copies of everything that we had. So, I would not imagine that it would be included in this document without being part of the document that was signed. What
I am trying to say is that the copies that we have and we gave to you are copies of everything sent to us by the BPE as advisers and that was what we forwarded to you.
We have looked through that briefly and it is actually reference, although it is not part of the appendix. So we cannot give you what we do not have. What I mean is that we only gave you what we have, we are not party to the contract.
The Chairman: There was a technical agreement?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: Yes, we did see it at the time of evaluation.
The Chairman: Look at Schedule G there. It must be what you are talking about.
Please, can you open to the schedules and look at it, because there is no way you are going to have an agreement with somebody who is just a consulting firm, and here you are looking for an international telecommunications operator. You must have definitely seen a binding agreement during your due diligence search or your due diligence investigation.
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: At the risk of trying to sound legalistic, what we are saying is that these documents that we have, that we forwarded to you, were copies of things sent to us by the BPE. At the time that all of these were being done, we actually did see those agreements and they were supposed to be an integral part of this final copy, but obviously, it is not there because Schedule G referred to the two agreements, one with VWN and the other with KPN. What we forwarded to you were electronic copies of what was given to us, without prejudice to our position.
The Chairman: Sorry, it has to be clear that, being an appendix and it is supposed to be part of the agreement, are you suggesting now that BPE must have sent to us something different from what they submitted to you?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: I have not made any such suggestion. I am just looking at the facts and the fact is that what we forwarded are copies of what we have. This is because we are not party to that agreement. BPE would only send to us copies and we would just file that because it is an electronic copy, and that was what I printed and sent to you. It should be part of the agreement.
The Chairman: You have now said that there is another agreement which you actually verified and you found out that agreement was a technical agreement between KPN and Pentascope. It is very important because whatever you are telling us here is already on record.
Enterprises and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai and PricewaterhouseCooper dubiously awarded the contract to manage NITEL to
Pentascope International and made Nigeria to lose over N100 billion.
In a crowd of the physically endowed, Nasir el-Rufai, erstwhile Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, and incumbent Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, will be as conspicuous as the squirrel is in the Animal Kingdom. Barely five foot six and so frail of frame, el-Rufai is, however, adequately compensated upstairs with outstanding intellect and generally, with a constitution so steely it sometimes borders on arrogance.
On 18 March 2003, that latter quality surged to the fore and literally tore to shreds a vital document that could well have saved the nation the sum of N100 billion lost to a most dubious management contract. The message in the document, from Dr. Haliru Bello, then Minister of Communications and titled, “NITEL Management Contract Signing Ceremony,” was terse but instructively frank. “In view of the prevailing circumstances surrounding the Management Contract,” it read, “you are advised to halt the signing ceremony scheduled for today, 18th March 2003, until further notice.” The letter was signed by Engineer G.O Asiegbu, permanent secretary of the Communications Ministry for the minister.
Inside the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, where the signing ceremony was holding, Dr. Anaze Chinwuba, then chairman of the NITEL Board of
Directors, who received the message, drew el-Rufai’s attention to it. But, as Chinwuba told a two-day public hearing organized in February 2005 by the House of Representatives Committee on Communication on the management contract, el-Rufai flew off the handle when he saw the directive to stop the signing. According to
Chinwuba, the FCT minister retorted that he would not take directives from permanent secretaries, as he was also one.
With that arrogant disposition and some strokes of the pen, the BPE committed the
Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, NITEL, into the hands of a hangman. As el-Rufai himself told the hearing, he was already fixated on giving away the management of NITEL to Pentascope International, an emergency vehicle that was later discovered to be unqualified in all ramifications, to manage the parastatal.
If he would be believed, he was doing it innocently. The Minister’s excuse was his infuriation at the couple of delays that the signing of the contract had suffered, and he was eager to prise the operations of ailing NITEL away from the leprous fingers of the public service and place them in the competent, reliable grasp of a private manager. In his judgement and that of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, PWC, BPE’s Adviser, that manager was Pentascope.
How competent, honest and reliable Pentascope was would manifest within a year after it sank its teeth into NITEL. Between April 2003 and March 2004, Pentascope had squandered a gain of N15 billion which it inherited to record a loss of N19.15 billion. Turnover had also dropped to N41 billion from N53 billion. Even as revenue generation was taking a flight, el-Rufai’s brilliant managers were redefining prudence, as direct cost and overheads spiralled from N21.3 billion and N19.4 billion respectively, to N26.3 billion and N30 billion.
Pentascope’s performance could not have been otherwise, considering its unimpressive financial, managerial and professional pedigree. The Dutch firm was only three months old when the BPE advertised for Expressions of Interest to manage NITEL. A small consulting company, rather than an active telecoms operator,
Pentascope was registered on, of all days, 1 January 2002, which was a public holiday worldwide, with a workforce of only eight persons, including its janitor.
It was not even registered in Nigeria to do business, as required by the Companies and Allied Matters Act. Both Professor Augustine Odinma, internationally renowned telecoms consultant, and the House of Representatives Communications Committee wondered how Pentascope got to be favoured by PWC and the BPE as the management contractor for NITEL, as the firm did not meet any of the criteria the Bureau listed in its advertisement. The pre-qualification criteria demanded that “Interested managers MUST be international telecommunications operators and MUST demonstrate, one, evidence of having installed and managed at least a million telephones; two, a successful track record of expanding a telecommunications network in a developing country; and three, sufficient management resources to grow NITEL and enhance shareholder value.
Unless the advertisement was sheer window dressing, what the BPE set out to do was unambiguous. It was looking for a telecoms operator of international standing, with outstanding track records. From the beginning, the BPE appreciated that “for any telecoms operator to be qualified to manage NITEL, it must demonstrate that it possesses the above mentioned criteria,” as noted by the House committee.
Clearly, Pentascope did not meet any of the requirements. At the hearing, the BPE and PWC engaged in buck-passing on who gave the Dutch firm the clean health bill that secured it the NITEL deal. Under oath at the public hearing, the Managing
Director of PWC, Mr. Ken Igbokwe said services of the consulting firm to the BPE were restricted to financial advisory. But el-Rufai clarified that the PWC was involved in the entire selection process. PWC, it was, that assisted the BPE in evaluating and short listing the initial 14 companies that applied to nine. The two bodies subsequently invited the nine companies to submit managerial, technical and financial bids. Of the nine, four were disqualified.
After a purported due diligence process and review of the five bids, PWC narrowed the list down to three. These are African Access/Lucent, which demanded $230 million to turn NITEL around and was awarded 56.8 points; BNSL/TCIL, which charged
$35 million to do the job for three years and was scored 71.5 points; and Pentascope, which charged $45 million to execute the contract over the same period and was given 75.5 points. Pentascope’s high scores were hinged mainly on one factor: It claimed a working agreement with KPN, the Netherlands leading telecoms company. During evaluation, PWC and the BPE would be expected to have conducted extensive investigations of Pentascope’s claims and verification of the documents it submitted. To hoodwink stakeholders, especially the NITEL board of directors and the National Council on Privatization, NCP, before the management contract was signed, the two buddies (BPE and PWC) submitted that Pentascope was, until 2002, owned by KPN. “Pentascope,” PWC and BPE told the NITEL board and the NCP, “had provided evidence of KPN’s commitment to continue to provide them with support and technical assistance as required.”
However, as was later exposed, these claims were gross misrepresentations willfully fabricated to mislead the NITEL board, the NCP, the federal government and inquisitive stakeholders. Pentascope was never owned by KPN. On the contrary, the former was only a supplier to the latter. Odinma, who consults for the House Communication Committee and whose dogged probing unearthed some of the malpractices that attended the Pentascope scam, explained that the firm, being a “type II consultant, is a stand-alone company, with limited consultancy skills and liability.” Interpreted, Pentascope is unsuitable for full-scale management of large telecommunication companies like NITEL.
How PWC and the BPE did not knock off Pentascope’s claim at the evaluation stage, only officials of the two bodies can explain. At the public hearing in February last year, the House committee members and participants drilled PWC’s Igbokwe and
Nick Allen, one of the company’s directors, on the criteria that informed the choice of Pentascope as the preferred management contractor and on the authenticity of the documents it submitted for the evaluation. A member asked Igbokwe whether
Pentascope, which PWC recommended, had ever installed a million lines in any developing country or has any track record of financial ability as strictly demanded by the PBE advert.
The PWC chief responded that applications were considered on the basis of consortium or technical partnership, rather than solo qualifications. PWC, Igbokwe said, believed that Pentascope was affiliated with KPN. Not satisfied with Igbokwe’s response, chairman of the hearing, Hon. Yemi Akodare, requested for clarification. He told Igbokwe: “Let me try and simplify this issue. The issue is that Pentascope International, which won the bid, is not a telecoms operator. It is a consulting firm. The first point that we actually wanted you to clear here is this. In this publication, we were looking for an International Telecommunications Operator, and when you talk of an International Telecommunications Operator, a consulting firm is here bidding. Do you see that consulting firm qualifying in the bid?” A flummoxed Igbokwe, rather than answer the question himself, beckoned on Allen to confront the legislators.
The PWC director stated that organizations that undertake telecommunications management contracts, whether in Africa or elsewhere, only need to be associated with large telecoms companies. He cited Pentascope as an example. “What we expected was the kind of organization that came forward. But we were looking for who was behind them, who they were affiliated with and also the capabilities of the people that they were putting forward,” Allen said. The legislators further stretched Igbokwe and Allen in the question-and-answer session.
The Chairman: PricewaterhouseCoopers. That is a big name and full of integrity, is it not? Based on whatever documents that Pentascope presented, what was the basis of your assessment or evaluation of these documents? How much diligence work did you do to verify on ground, for example, the authenticity of the kinds of documents or claims that Pentascope made to you as PricewaterhouseCoopers?
Mr. Nick Allen: It is not typically part of the role of the financial adviser to do that and it was not in the scope of work we do for BPE. I have seen circumstances where financial advisers have been asked to do that if circumstances suggest it appropriate but in this situation, it was not considered.
Question from A Hon. Member: If I heard you well, you said that it was not within your scope of job. Is that what you said?
Mr. Nick Allen: Your original question was whether we carried out detailed diligence on the bidders and I am saying that it was not part of our scope of work.
A Hon. Member: If that is not within your scope of work, how are you going to analyse it and how are you going to advise BPE? BPE is about selling the first carrier of Nigeria. That is NITEL. If you feel that as financial advisers it is not your duty to do the due diligence, then what is your job?
Mr. Nick Allen: Our job is to support BPE, consistent with the terms of reference as set out for us, which did not include detailed due diligence on the bidders.
A Hon. Member: I want to refer you to your document here. Page 19, your rating of
Pentascope. There is a statement there, “sound technical.” What do you mean by sound technical? How did you come out with that conclusion that Pentascope is sound technical?
The Chairman: PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is like you are having problems answering some of these questions?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: He asked us a question and we do not know the document that he was referring to.
The Chairman: But these are the documents that you presented to us. You brought these documents to us yesterday and I am sure that definitely, you must have looked
at these documents.
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: He just said sound technical, page 19, and we do not have page 19, so we need to find out what page it is and try and respond to you.
Mr. Nick Allen: We have found the reference, and the document that you were referring to was a presentation made to the NITEL Board which attempted to capture the results of the evaluation of the documents that had been submitted by the bidders, their proposals for managing NITEL. That was a process that involved a number of people both from BPE and ourselves reviewing the documents and evaluating them against such detailed evaluation criteria that had been agreed at the beginning of the process. On the basis of that, Pentascope scored very highly.
The Chairman: They asked you if you did a due diligence in respect of this presentation that was given to you by these companies. It is just for you to say that yes, we did our due diligence and we confirmed all the presentations that they did, or that we did not.
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: With respect to the question on “sound technical,” what it actually said on this document is sound technical and organizational proposals.
Remember that part of the process that we are evaluating these bidders for is what they plan to do and how they plan to do it. What this is referring to, I believe, is that they have strong technical proposal for what they are going to do when they get into NITEL...
Whereas the relationship between Pentascope and KPN is by Technical Support
Agreement that they have – (interruptions)
The Chairman: Can you clear that point when you talk about Technical Support Agreement? Did you by any chance see any Technical Support Agreement?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: I believe that there was and it was included in the Management Contract binding them and their affiliates.
The Chairman: Did you see that document and will you be able to produce a copy of that document?
Mr. Nick Allen: Yes, and as Ken was saying, it is part of the NITEL Management Contract.
The Chairman: This is the Management Contract here. Can you please give it to him and let him see if he can bring it for us. (Passes the document to Mr. Nick Allen)
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: Mr. Chairman, if you remember the note that I sent to you to forward these documents, I was basically saying to you that these are copies of documents that BPE gave to us. We know that this was referred to in this document; they are copies of everything that we had. So, I would not imagine that it would be included in this document without being part of the document that was signed. What
I am trying to say is that the copies that we have and we gave to you are copies of everything sent to us by the BPE as advisers and that was what we forwarded to you.
We have looked through that briefly and it is actually reference, although it is not part of the appendix. So we cannot give you what we do not have. What I mean is that we only gave you what we have, we are not party to the contract.
The Chairman: There was a technical agreement?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: Yes, we did see it at the time of evaluation.
The Chairman: Look at Schedule G there. It must be what you are talking about.
Please, can you open to the schedules and look at it, because there is no way you are going to have an agreement with somebody who is just a consulting firm, and here you are looking for an international telecommunications operator. You must have definitely seen a binding agreement during your due diligence search or your due diligence investigation.
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: At the risk of trying to sound legalistic, what we are saying is that these documents that we have, that we forwarded to you, were copies of things sent to us by the BPE. At the time that all of these were being done, we actually did see those agreements and they were supposed to be an integral part of this final copy, but obviously, it is not there because Schedule G referred to the two agreements, one with VWN and the other with KPN. What we forwarded to you were electronic copies of what was given to us, without prejudice to our position.
The Chairman: Sorry, it has to be clear that, being an appendix and it is supposed to be part of the agreement, are you suggesting now that BPE must have sent to us something different from what they submitted to you?
Mr. Ken Igbokwe: I have not made any such suggestion. I am just looking at the facts and the fact is that what we forwarded are copies of what we have. This is because we are not party to that agreement. BPE would only send to us copies and we would just file that because it is an electronic copy, and that was what I printed and sent to you. It should be part of the agreement.
The Chairman: You have now said that there is another agreement which you actually verified and you found out that agreement was a technical agreement between KPN and Pentascope. It is very important because whatever you are telling us here is already on record.
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