Dr Christopher Anyanwu, from Enyiogugu in Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo state, is a Law lecturer at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Before then, he had taught in the Nigerian Law School for 15 years. In March 2009, the late President, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, appointed him as the Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). Fired by patriotism, zeal and love for his father, Anyanwu says he discharged his duties with transparency as his watchword.

The seasoned lawyer, who appeared not ready to conform to the ‘Nigerian way of doing things’ later incurred the wrath of those, who, undoubtedly, had been incurably infected with the virus known as ‘Nigeria factor’. As far as the ‘hawks’ in the Presidency are concerned, for refusing to ‘cooperate’ he must go.

The result was the emergence of a coalition of conspirators, who, he said, fed the President with wrong information about his person and his activities as the DG of BPE. Curiously, the allegations against him were not hinged on corrupt practices but over controversies surrounding the sale of NITEL and the Skyway Aviation Handling Company (SAHCOL). Many believe that the sale of the two companies, through open and competitive bidding, is one of the best privatization that had taken place in the country in the recent times. Their reason being the value of the sale and the transparent manner the businesses were transacted.

Yet, on March 2010, exactly one year into his appointment, Anyanwu was suspended from office, via a letter from the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed. He was ordered to hand over to Ms Bolanle Onagoruwa, a director, who had just a few days to retire from service. She was later confirmed as DG.
The recent approval by President Goodluck Jonathan, after setting up panels to investigate the sale, according to Anyanwu, is a vindication that the privatization of NITEL and SAHCOL were transparently carried out.
Anyanwu, who decided to break his silence after he was relieved of his position seven months ago, spoke to Daily Sun in Lagos recently.
Excerpts:

Some people are of the view that you were doing well as the Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises. What went wrong that resulted in your removal?
I’m sure you were all witnesses to the fact that it was after the completion of the privatization of NITEL that trouble broke out in the presidency, the BPE suspension and then, I was disengaged. So, ordinarily, such chain of events might be misunderstood or misinterpreted if you allow silence to be the order of the day. I was silent for a long time for one reason. It is good for your actions to be evaluated, put under the screen, examined and result given. So, I decided to break the silence, after three investigating panels looked at that transaction. And then, finally, the president himself has endorsed it. Now, who were the presiding officers of the three panels? The first panel was set up immediately after the sale, an NCP panel headed by Adetokunbo Kayode, the former Attorney-General of the Federation.

It was a panel of about 13 persons. Before they could conclude sitting, Kayode was moved to the Ministry of Defence and then, another panel headed by Mohammed Bello Adoke, the current Attorney-General, was set up. That one sat for three months or thereabouts and gave report. Another panel was headed by the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Emeka Wogu. I had access to the Report of the three panels. I don’t need to bother about Adetokunbo’s panel because they did not conclude, although Kayode purported to issue a Report, which only him signed.

You know how such things happen. So, the Report was disregarded. I had access to that of the minister of Labour. They recommended that government should adopt the privatization of NITEL as concluded by me. Then, the panel headed by Adoke, their Report was sent to the NCP, which extensively debated it and unanimously passed it and said that government must conclude the process as I had concluded it. That is, by handing it over to the winners. I’m sure some of them were witnesses to the process.

From the background that I came, I have been teaching all my life. First of all, I taught for thirteen years in the Law School and then, another five years in the University of Nigeria, Law Faculty. So, I was not schooled in the intrigues of putting public assets in any private hands, without following the due process. As far as I was concerned, transparency was the order of the day. I can quote one paragraph of the summary of the Report by the Mohammed Adoke panel. That is the one that NCP debated. It said in its summary that “the privatization of NITEL was transparently done and the procedures were strictly followed. I emphasize the words, ‘strictly followed’ and that all approvals required were obtained.

That is paragraph 1 of the summary of the Report. But the allegations made against me, malicious allegations by Mallam Mohammed Hayatu-Deen and Mike Oghiadomhe, were that I unilaterally reversed the sale of NITEL to TRANSCOP. That I also changed the advertisement when it had been published in the newspapers, that I altered it. That I wrongly advised the late President Yar’Adua to issue bond of Promissory Note to the banks that funded TRANSCOP’s acquisition of NITEL.

One of the allegations against you was that you were not carrying your subordinates along. Is it true? If so, why did you decide to run a one-man show?
These allegations were malicious and unfounded because, if they were not, that should have been the basis of accusing me, trying me and finding me guilty, before any action will be taken. The revocation of sale of NITEL to TRANSCOP was a decision taken by the late President, after due consideration of a petition sent to him by the consortium of bankers that gave loan to TRANSCOP. The bankers sent the petition to the president, requesting that the sale to TRANSCOP be cancelled, since they were not capable of managing NITEL, so that they don’t lose their investments.

On my own part, I was merely two months in office and I examined the circumstances. I saw the hidden hands that wanted to acquire NITEL at no cost and sell it as scrap, and those hidden hands were relying on a clause in the Share Sale Purchase Agreement that says that after three years, government should not look into what happens to the assets of NITEL. It remained just one month. So, the consortium of bankers had already visited BPE and they had visited the President, and narrated their ordeals. I wrote a Memo, which I sent through the Vice President, to the President, saying, if by next month, they don’t know what to do with NITEL, then these people would have to write to sell the assets and that’s why they have been foot-dragging in the move to re-privatize it.

What the late President did was to summon me and the bankers and sought for a way out. After due consideration of my own advice and that of his Economic Adviser, he ordered the revocation. By that time, the Vice President was on a foreign trip. So, he was not there when the decision was taken to revoke NITEL. The Chief Economic Adviser reasoned that if he could privatize NITEL effectively, that we could raise the money to pay off the bankers and also have a balance for the new owners to resuscitate NITEL. I also bought that argument, reason being that if we allow almost 70 to 80 billion naira to go down the drain on the ground that it was a wrong investment, you know there was a time that five banks collapsed but for the intervention of Central Bank. More than ten would have collapsed. The five consortium would have also gone down, in fact, the economy would have collapsed. That was the advice of the Chief Economic Adviser, that the government does not have to always go legalistically and say ‘this is a wrong investment, let them suffer it’.

What happened was that those who had interest in NITEL and wanted to sell it as scrap were thinking of giving it to indigenous investor for about $100,000,000 or $50,000,000, after the usual Nigerian manipulations. They didn’t want us to bring out the true value of NITEL. I sought expert advice from both local and foreign telecom operators and then we thought of unbundling NITEL, to bring out the potentials of each of the components like, M-Tel. fixed lines among others. They are about seven components. These are different business units that can thrive on their own. We discussed the unbundling option at the management meeting of BPE and took it also to the NCP and they approved it, so we advertised NITEL in an unbundling form.

If you compare it to what is happening to PHCN now, where we also unbundled it to have 18 components which is what is happening in other countries where they have regular light. I also looked at the NITEL option and said unbundling it is the best option. Those interests that don’t want the true value to come out are in high places, they are in the presidency.

They said why should I alter the advertisement criteria, why should I unbundle it, what is my own, this and that. Eventually, we embarked on extensive advertisement, road shows, we went to Europe, America, Asia, I was advertising NITEL, the potentials in unbundled form. We had tremendous response, unlike before. About 19 companies expressed interest to come and invest, what had not happened before.

If you compare the office BPE, apart from the office of President of Nigeria, it is debatable whether BPE is not the most controversial place. This is the office that oversees all the investments of the government since independence. From the steel, banking sectors, all government investments. I know that the problem between Atiku and Obasanjo was not far from BPE. Because the DG reports directly to the Vice President, who reports to the President, so human interest will always play out and all the interest masquerades.

While they will be pushing you in accordance with their interests privately, publicly they will be… It is always the case. But as a person and a lawyer, I know that I have to obey Jonathan and Yar’Adua because I report to them directly. Whether their decisions were right or wrong, I must obey. In the absence of any clear direction or decision, I must be transparent. That was my guiding philosophy in that office. In truth, the various interest groups in NITEL conflicted one another in their expectations. When they failed to achieve their expectations, what was like a coalition of conspirators emerged, all pointing accusing fingers at Dr Anyanwu, the man who must go.

They formulated all sorts of lies and fed them to the Vice President, who later became Acting President. Of course, if they were true, if there were evidence, they would have prosecuted me, if I did anything wrong. Very highly placed persons in the Presidency, very highly placed, came with some investors, even up to my house and they were saying, ‘this is what Yar’Adua and Jonathan said you should do, you write a memo saying that NITEL is dead and that it should be given to this man’. I said well and good, Jonathan and Yar’Adua are my direct bosses, if they give me such instruction, I will carry it out.

They said they will get for me in writing, they didn’t get anything for me in writing. And to be fair to the current President who was the then VP, he called me privately and told me, ‘please, if anybody says I said this, or I want you to do this, confirm from me, don’t just do.’ There was no time he called me to confirm what those private visitors told me. These are his highly placed Assistants. And the last conversion I had with President Yar’Adua before he traveled and then died, he summoned me and his Chief Economic Adviser was sitting by the right and I was sitting by the left and the subject was NITEL.

And he said that too many interests of Nigerians are involved in NITEL and that I should not give anybody the impression that I am compromised or that I am favouring Mr. A or Mr. B and pointed at my face and said, ‘Be very transparent.’ Since he didn’t tell me to give to those people and merely said that I should be transparent, I conducted the process in the most transparent manner I know.

And the approval of it, after a consideration of three panels is a culmination of that transparency. I wanted to see where they would fault one step of mine. Up till today, the privatization was completed in February, this is about nine or eight months, thereafter, nobody can say, this is where you misfired, this is where your personal interest was pursued or whatever, any manifestation of corrupt tendency. That’s why, when the President finally adopted that report, I beat my chest and said, yes, that is a vindication. It is not the best of statements about the characters. No! I have been a public officer for about 18 or 19 years. I taught in the Nigerian Law School for thirteen years, I taught in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka for five years before I was appointed. I also taught in the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

If I had been a person of questionable character, is not just public records that you will look, in my public office, I have been having contact with human beings. As a law student lecturer, every year, I teach not less than 3,000 students. They know me, if I were someone that would take money for marks, which is what lecturers are accused of or sexual harassment or whatever. If I were the type, if it didn’t come out in the Law School, it would have come out in the University of Nigeria or any other place. Nobody is saying he is a saint here but the idea is that character is built overtime.

What about your personal interests, didn’t they influence your decisions while you were the DG?
And I would have been surprised, if anybody would come out and say that I allowed my private interest to influence my action in the BPE, because people like us refrain from following the cheap, criminal way that most Nigerian leaders adopt in their actions. Character that has taken such a long period of time to build should not be allowed to be smeared on the altar of few individuals in the Presidency, who wanted to take NITEL for themselves, where they wanted to raise money for themselves for the next election. They were telling me all these things, I said no, you must follow the due process. I even learnt that some of them went to induce EFCC officials and ICPC officials to see whether they can fabricate anything against me so as to smear my image.

Those people looked at them, and said, no. I thank God that EFCC is a different organization now. Unless you have hard facts, unlike before, maybe, they would have influenced some officials to come and start embarrassing me. The fourth estate which you people represent has a duty at all times. Like me, I believe that as a lawyer, I have a duty to fight injustice and I was fighting it at my own cost through the courts. Before I started teaching in the Law School, I was practising. I could take the government to court to stop an election, if I was not registered. And as a Lawyer, I have my heroes and my number one hero is Gani Fawehinmi.

He was my very good friend. Each time I visited him, he would take me to his innermost room and I taught his two children, Mohammed and Basirat, and by that time Gani was in prison in Gashua or Bauchi. When they released him temporarily to his mother, he came straight to us in the Law School and told me, “gentlemen, please, don’t visit my problem with the government on my children.” I pitied the man because I knew I would be the last person to visit, , because I am an opponent of dictatorship and what was happening in the country. I know that one of his children couldn’t make Law School for the first time.

His daughter was always distracted in the class because when you teach, you study your students. That one, you would see her gaping and opening her eyes. And you will know that she is not concentrating because her father is locked away in prison. One day, I called the son and daughter into my office and told them that if I would have a father again, I would want to have their own father as a father. I told them to be proud of him and not to be ashamed of him, not to be feeling that he is hated in the country or whatever. I told them, don’t be distracted, feel ashamed or feel that everybody is against your father and all that. That is the kind of person I am. If they knew my antecedent and read my books, they wouldn’t put me in an office where they would want a hatchet man, somebody who would just do only what he is told, do you understand?

Unfortunately, they brought me there and then, I stood for principles and transparency and what happened to me happened. I think that you have the duty, in every calling, you have the genuine and the charlatans but I believe that whatever you are, for you to excel, you have to have a purpose and how to pursue it. You have to pursue justice at all cost and at all times, pursue it with your life. If there is anything that is worth suffering for, it is justice and truth. If anybody will kill you, let it be because you are fighting justice, you will ultimately be vindicated.

Why has it taken you such a long time to break the silence?
I had to break this silence so that it will not be misinterpreted as, okay, he has been settled or to be in doubt about what actually happened, may be, for the avoidance of doubt. I dragged them to court. I was in the University doing my job very well and then, you invited and gave me a contractual appointment for four years. You did not invite me and interview me or whatever. I just saw my name on the TV and all that. And I took it as a national call, where I would go and put in my best and I went to put in my best.

I relocated my family from Enugu State to Abuja and started the job. The law that sets up BPE tenures it like the one that tenures the office of the Judges. The purpose is to stabilize the system and insulate the occupant of that office from the vicissitudes of manipulations of private interests. But unfortunately for the BPE, because of the opposition between President Obasanjo and Vice president Atiku, they tended to ignore that tenuring, that statutory requirement, so that if you are not doing anybody’s bidding, they may engineer your removal. That’s one, as a lawyer, that’s why I went to court. The rule of law must prevail. The law has said it clearly that once is a tenured appointment, unless you commit a disciplinary offence or the person is insane in mind and body that you can no longer perform. These are the two conditions. So, the big man syndrome of our government, so many Nigerians damned the consequences and walk the laws on the head. But make no mistakes about the fact that we are all stakeholders. I have the potentials of being the president of Nigeria.

In a society that claims to be democratic or operate under the rule of law, you cannot walk the rule of law on the head. If there is accusation against anybody, the procedure is there, you normally need to set up panel to look into the accusations and make recommendations. And you will invite that person to explain himself. If you don’t follow that procedure, it means that we are going back to the Stone Age of absolutism, where one person will think, he is lord unto others. We will not accept that. As someone who hold a doctorate degree, the highest qualification in law, I cannot let that happen without drawing attention to it. I don’t care about whether I work with this group or that group or not. If you cannot work with those in the presidency for now, it doesn’t mean you can’t work with other people. They should not be allowed to eclipse the career of another because public office is transient.

It keeps rotating, it may rotate them down there and I may be the one or those who know me or believe in what I believe in that will look at their activities, justify them or not justify them. I just want a civilized way of doing things.
The President has to act on the Report of those who work with him. And when there is conspiracy among those who work with him, to present somebody in bad light, he could be misled. The panel Reports came out after all the actions had been taken, all the suspension and disengagement and whatever. It is like they acted before they started thinking, they jumped the gun. You don’t punish a person before you consider his actions, and after the results are out. They didn’t even say, okay, we were sorry.

I give him that benefit of the doubt, that he didn’t have the benefit of good advice, because there was conspiracy among some of his lieutenants to present the wrong picture. And I’m happy to tell you that he disappointed all of them, because the persons they were pushing as the person who would have succeeded me, he did not appoint any of them. It is the person I chose to replace me according to the letter of suspension that was eventually confirmed.
My removal was the handiwork of a coalition of conspirators in the Presidency. There was this group, that group and all that. They now coalesced on one interest, they thought I was…

In helping them to achieve their goal in NITEL and in all the privatizations. I incurred the wrath of one of them simply because I beamed into the privatization of Nigerdock and saw that it was a flawed privatization. For ten years or thereabout, they were not making any profit and government is a part owner. I said if you can’t, we may have to look elsewhere and we look for people who have the expertise, who can run it at a profit. He had hidden interest. At the end of the day, he replied my letter and wrote Jonathan and wrote to everybody and said, I am not suitable for the office. For him to reply a letter on behalf of NIGERDOCK, you can see that his interest is not hidden.
He led a group. They were pushing one of them to replace me as the DG, he disappointed them.

The other group was led by somebody and he was fronting for a private investor. He was the one that brought the investor to my house and all that and told me to do this and that, and that it was Jonathan who said all that. Apart from the Report being a vindication and his confirming the transaction, the strong vindication is the fact that he put that lady whom I chose to be there. That lady, a week after that day, she was to retire. So, when they wrote me a letter, they had already made phone calls and confirmed who they wanted to put there.

But from the tune of the letter, I knew that the most senior person was to take over. If she did not take over, that would have been unfortunate for this country. It was just like I went there without knowing, I was invited to come and take this job. That was how she was not expecting that somebody would give her that job. She is such a person that hand of destiny brought into public office. You have the duty to be fair and to do your best and not think of personal interest, otherwise, you will not last in that office. That was how she emerged.

Some people, including you, of course, are saying that President Goodluck Jonathan did not follow the due process in relieving you of your duty. Is that true? In your opinion, how could he have done it?
Yes, one thing you would have said the President didn’t get right would have been, okay, there is a procedure. When people complain against anybody, there is standard procedure. Isn’t it? You set up a panel, invite the person. When these conspirators coalesced, they went straight, marched straight to the President.

What did they do? They didn’t say this man has done some wrongs, let’s investigate him. They said, ‘remove him.’ That was the order, they just ordered the President. They said, ‘remove this man!’ and he told them a proverb Abiola used to give. That ‘you can not shave a man’s head in his absence. He told them to put their allegations in writing. They put it in writing and he minuted it to the Secretary to the Government.

As the chief civil servant, what he would have done was to put the process, the procedure of investigation like, setting up a panel , they look into it and give the Report to the President. He didn’t do that, he went straight away and implemented what they recommended to him and I was laughing because, I know, apart from the fact that my job in the University is secured, I’m also a seasoned practising lawyer. I can survive any time any day. I won’t be too forward about public office, if what is going wrong in a public office I’m occupying is not what I can put up with. I would resign, that’s my attitude to public office.

This is because, I still have, not only my integrity, my profession and all that. The fact that Jonathan did not insist on due legal process…That office is not a political one. The law that set it up stipulated a tenure and that tenure cannot be cut short unless certain things go wrong. That’s why I went to the court, I think they are reckless because they think that if you defeat them in court, they will use government money to pay. That’s a lapse in our system.

Some leaders can be reckless because, they think, okay, it is government money, isn’t it? If they award the damages of say, N100 million, you use government money to pay. It would come to a stage where in future, the law would so define it that if you are reckless or if you abuse your office, you would pay from your personal resources and even when you leave your office. That’ where we are driving to, because we are talking of law reform and all that and that is the kind of thing we are recommending. No person is above mistake, but at the highest office, you cannot afford to make certain mistakes. You cannot tamper with the Rule of Law because, you are the chief enforcer or protector of the law.

In certain places like the US, one mistake with procedure, with the law will make people start wondering, ‘is this how you are going to rule us’? But here, unfortunately, we are where people do not have…, not knowing that it is also the law that protects them. It is not as if there was a time he called us one-on-one and say, what went wrong? Or this is what has gone wrong, what we do about this or that? He relied completely on some conspirators that coalesced. That’s one, because, you are dealing with somebody who also has the potentials of even occupying any office in the country. In this country, we kill our talents and our prospective leaders, because we don’t even encourage anybody who is transparent or who wants to do thing rightly.

I got a PhD in Law and it was paid for by the British government. If it were to be Nigerian government, If I were to pay it by myself, I wouldn’t get it. It cost them about fifty something thousand pounds that time-2002. They paid it because they saw potentials in me. But here, they wouldn’t want to do things to help the country. They prefer criminals to be in public offices. The Electoral system allows former 419 kingpin, well known, his case file pending in the court, to go to the House and then, appointments…

If you see Jonathan today and all these issue arise, what would you tell him?
(Laughs) I would say, oga, all those people told lies against me.

Did you have an inkling that you were going to be removed?
Yes, when we started NITEL privatization, I had known the centrifugal and centripetal interests at work. And I had said to myself, especially, after the advice of Yar’adua not to align to any interest whatsoever. I can not accept any gratification because that is not my way of doing things. Everybody, even myself, regarded the privatization of NITEL as acid test and I was bent on upholding, at least, what Yar’Adua told me – to be transparent. I knew that I was going to step on toes. It was too obvious to me and I was willing to step on them to uphold transparency. It was during the stage of NITEL privatization that I knew that I either stay in that office or leave. And I was prepared. |Everyday, I only left my papers or willing to pick them and leave. That is my attitude to public office.

Value of sale of NITEL?
First and foremost, NITEL was sold to TRANSCOP for 500 million dollars. That was when it was active, the lines were working, M-Tel was working. It was sold for 500 million dollars, which five Nigerian banks contributed together to pay. Now, when NITEL had died, no line was functioning, every infrastructure was powered down and because of my aggressive marketing, advertisements and Road shows and unbundling, which I did, we had not only about 19 expressions of interests, we were able to sell it for 2.5 billion dollars.

That is a feat nobody has performed in this country in one year. And this money was to come from outside Nigeria and not from Nigerian banks. A Middle East financier was willing to pay for it. Now, 2.5 billion dollars at the current exchange rate is about N385 billion.

Those hawks in the Presidency wanted it to go for between, 50 to 100 dollars so that they could have money for election. After the deal and even after this confirmation by the President, I have got a lot of congratulatory letters, many of them saying, if this were to be normal country, I should be entitled to national honours because, make no mistake about it, they had sold it four times and failed. Ask me why they failed. It is because they were all compromised sales. It was the hidden hands of government officials and their interests. All those five times were negotiated sales-willing buyers and willing sellers. And those persons in the office of the Vice President also wanted me to do negotiated sales and they had somebody in their minds.

I now said why do you want to go back to the same way to do it? That was why I brought in the innovation of unbundling, excessive advertisements and then, open and competitive bidding. You would discover that within the one year I stayed there, I did only two privatizations through open and competitive bidding. One was Skyway Aviation Handling Company (SAHCOL) and the other is NITEL. SAHCOL was valued at N1.8 billion and I sold it for N5.5billion. Ask those who are at the airport or those who eventually got it if they had seen my face before, if they knew me.

The same thing with NITEL. The people who won it… It is inability of Nigerians to come to terms that, somebody could decide to have a detached attitude to bidding. They were always thinking, okay, before these people would have bided $2.5 billion, they would have paid 25 percent. That’s Nigerian way of thinking. Even if those people tried it, I wouldn’t have taken it.

They couldn’t come to terms that somebody could do such a deal, 2.5 billion dollars or N385 billion and you cannot say that anybody paid him a dime. Well, they have gone to all the places to investigate, to all my friends, they have gone to them to investigate. They thought I must have taken…, because that is their way of doing things.
The idea is that injustice begets injustice. One of them from Edo state, who is heading the hawks in the President’s office, I heard him telling people, ‘that boy, I wounded him.’

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2010/nov/15/national-15-11-2010-013.htm