FG to Hand over Five Stadia, Others to Concessionaires in 2021

FG to Hand over Five Stadia, Others to Concessionaires in 2021

Deji Elumoye in Abuja

The federal government will in 2021 concession its stadia across the country, the National Arts Theatre and the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) located in Lagos.

The stadiums owned by the federal government include National Stadium, Lagos; Moshood Abiola stadium in Abuja; Jos International Stadium, Jos; Ahmadu Bello stadium in Kaduna, and Adokiye Amiesimaka stadium in Port Harcourt.

The Director-General of Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Alex Okoh, who disclosed this yesterday, also said the government would commercialise all the River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) and sell off Nigeria’s three Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) located in Omotosho, Geregu and Calabar to core investors.

Okoh, who appeared before the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, was queried over the collection of N1 billion from the Ministry of Finance to fund the Afam and Geregu power plants without appropriation.

Commenting on state of commercialised government enterprises, the BPE boss disclosed that over 262 government enterprises had been sold since the past 30
years.

He added that only 25 percent of the enterprises are in comatose, promising to submit the monitoring and assessment of the government privatised companies to the committee.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Theodore Orji, summarised the position of the committee thus: “Our observations on 2019 BPE budget performance and 2020 Appropriation Bill showed that BPE DG obtained N1billion life line from the Federal Ministry of Finance to finance BPE 2019 transactions, including Afam Power Plant, Geregu Power Plant among others without appropriation.

“We also found that in Geregu Power Plant, the core investor already owned 51 percent shares and that the transaction emanated from a request by the investor for additional 29 percent of the federal government residual 49 percent shares. There was no competition and only BPE and its appointed transaction advisers know how the value was determined and sold for N13billion.

“On Afam Power Plant, it was mentioned that there are actually 2 different power plants i.e Afam Power Plant and Afam Fast Power (a brand new plant) built by Seimen yet to be unveiled. Reports have it that it cost about $1million to build a megawatt of a power plant. There is need to investigate these transactions properly to ensure that Nigeria are not short-changed in the transactions.

“We are also concerned with the recent exit of Transcorp Hilton from post-privatisation monitoring by NCP on the recommendation of BPE, knowing that even though BPE was on the board had 49 percent, but today, our shares have gone down to 11 percent, failing to take up the shares when right issue was done even though the core investor failed to comply and implement its covenants with Post Acquisition Plan (PA) and development plan within five years.

“My submission is that we ask the of BPE to provide us with all copies of the agreements, correspondences, minutes of meetings, reports and NCP approvals to enable us review them before we take any action in the interest of the country.”

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