Scandal: BPE Offered Me $35m Bribe To Abandon ALSCON Judgement – Reuben Jaja

The last is yet to be heard from the controversial privatisation of the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria, ALSCON in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom state by the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE in 2004. 16 years after the initial transaction that is bedeviled with litigations, the preferred bidder of the plant Reuben Jaja alleging being offered a bribe to the tune of 35 million United States dollars by the Bureau of Public Enterprises’ Director General, Alex Okoh to sale the Supreme Court Judgement on ALSCON after the apex court ruled in his favour. Addressing members of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria, FICAN in Abuja, Mr. Jaja said BPE has so far been economical with the truth on the transaction. He alleged that BPE deliberately frustrated the BFIG’s attempts to take over ALSCON by altering the contents of the original Share Purchase Agreement from a 58-page document to 16 pages. Chief Jaja also accused BPE of connivance with foreign companies to fraudulent compromise the nation’s privatisation exercise. The BPE Director General, Alex Okoh in a text message faulted Reuben Jaja’s claims by describing it as not logical and distortions of facts. It would be recalled that in 2004, BFIG emerged the preferred bidder for ALSCON with an offer of $410 million following the disqualification of UC RUSAL by the National Council on Privatisation headed by former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar for submitting a conditional bid in defiance of the bid guidelines. To this end, a payment schedule was approved on May 20th 2004 at a pre-bid technical meeting of all parties was to apply which the preferred bidder is to pay an initial ten per cent of the bid price within fifteen working days after the signing of the Share Purchase Agreement with BPE. But, that was not to be.