•Stakeholders write petitions to Buhari

By Dennis Agbo

ENUGU– The  purported Privatization of defunct Nigeria Coal Corporation, NCC, with its headquarter in Enugu has continued to generate the interest of stakeholders in the coal industry particularly the former workers of the corporation who are wondering what manner of privatization was carried out in the Nigeria’s premier solid mineral industry that has completely deflated the industry.

As far as the ex-staff are concerned, what took place was sale and outright devastation, cannibalization of equipment and properties of the industry with no intention to revitalize the needed mining of coal through privatization as was the original philosophy of the federal government’s privatization policy in 2003.

The former staff of the defunct corporation are therefore more worried that the industry has gone under with no insight to it coming back to mining of coal, the former workers wages and entitlements trapped, the property of the corporation sold to individuals, monetization of the property not adequately carried out while the essential equipment were so cannibalized that even an investor would find it extremely difficult to start any major move to mine coal at different mines in Enugu, Benue, Delta and Kogi states.

In a litany of petitions the disengaged and retired staff of NCC have submitted to  President Mohammadu Buhari and government agencies including the anti-graft agencies, the former workers are lamenting the non settlement of all arrears owned the disengaged staff of the NCC amounting to about N315 million; destruction of coal mining property by the Bureau for Public Enterprise, BPE, through a property consultancy firm,  corruption through a purported monetization of houses of the NCC, allegedly being committed by the consultancy firm,  among other allegations.

•Coal corpration hqtrs Enugu

In an open letter to President Mohammadu Buhari, some of the concerned disengaged and retired workers alleged that a hurried monetization of the NCC properties has been enmeshed in corruption to the extent that money is being paid into private accounts other than to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) of the federal government.

“BPE and their agent  have sold off heavy plants and machinery of NCC at very ridiculous prices and declaring peanuts to the BPE and even the lands too. This is a clear case of corruption. Example of such sale made is the gigantic and highly sophisticated coal washrey plant housed in an entire seven story building built by KOPEX contractors, Poland, together with the vast land housing the edifice worth over a billion naira was sold at N160, 000,000. Other examples are two high capacity coal briquette plants at Enugu and Ankpa Kogi states which were sold in the same manner as plants and weigh bridges at Enugu, Okaba and Owukpa amongst many others,” the ex-staffs alleged.

In another letter to President Buhari dated September 1 2015, the labour leaders of former workers prayed the President to scrutinize all transactions made by the BPE, their agent and NCC officials, maintaining that due processes were not followed and lacked transparency. They are also asking President Buhari to compel the NCC, BPE, and their agent to make available all the NCC landed property survey plans, including mine plans for public scrutiny. “Ask the BPE, NCC, their agent to make available comprehensive list of all NCC office properties in the country, whether leased or not; whether sold or not as a lot of lease documents were manipulated while a good number leases that expired were secretly and hurriedly re-negotiated, back dated and removed from government files.”

Yet in another petition authored by Comrades Okey Uwaelelam and Hyacinth Ohagwu to the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, the ex-staff asked the commission to probe why the BPE and their agent flouted the federal government’s order to remit monies from the monetization of NCC properties to the TSA, “amongst other deliberate irregular, inordinate, practices like not issuing receipts for money paid to them on behalf of the federal government.”

Saturday Vanguard’s interaction with the consultancy firm,  however revealed that some matters were already in court as their staff referred us to BPE.

The Director of Mines in BPE, Alhaji Dikko on his own account stated that it is not the business of the BPE to question what buyers of properties do with them as they have become the properties of the new owners. On the issue of the sold coal processing plant being used for other purposes other than for coal matters, Dikko said the plant was vandalized before the BPE sold it to the new owner, which he said was the main reason, he could not hold the new owner responsible.

On the allegation of not operating a TSA in the monetization of NCC properties, Dikko faulted the allegation, pointing out  a joint account was opened by both the consultancy firm and the BPE at Zenith Bank and which monies have been remitted to the TSA. “We transferred money to TSA and we are still in the process. You can check with the CBN. We are responsible and want to be fair so that we can give good account of everything,” said Dikko.

On the hope of achieving revival of coal mining through privatization, the BPE official stated there is an existing committee drawn from government agencies with the mandate to draw out a road map for immediate coal mining revival. “We were supposed to go to the five coal blocks to make diligence recommendation but the rainy season disrupted it because you can’t go to the mines in rainy season but now that the rains are getting over we will soon commence the assignment,” disclosed Dikko.