The management of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), under the leadership of the now arrested Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has been indicted in corrupt practices and breach of Procurement Act in the award of contract for project involving CBN and the Nigerian Deposit and Insurance Corporation (NDIC).
This was disclosed in a petition filed by Femi Akinyemi Esq. for Falana Falana’s Chambers, on behalf of the petitioner, Magbel Technology Ltd., and addressed to the Honourable Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
According to the petitioner, Magbel Technology Ltd. applied to do a project for about N3.5 billion after having successfully taken part in a competitive tender for design and implementation of an Information Technology solution.
Parrotvibes gathered that Emefiele and his colleagues, however, refused to the award to Magbel Technology Ltd, the actual winner of the tender, but rather, awarded the contract to a company, BluePrint Technology, for a bogus N6.16 billion.
Meanwhile, the CBN budget for the project was N3.6 billion.
The Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) wrote ICPC to clear themselves of any wrongdoing, and indicated that the project was awarded for about N3.2 billion.
Unrelenting, Magbel dug deeper to uncover the facts behind the tender and obtained relevant documents and reports through an application made under Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, CBN.
It was through that FOI instrumentality that it was discovered that the contract was actually awarded for N3.6 billion.
The petitioner approached Falana & Falana’s Chambers and the law firm wrote ICPC and ICPC replied in a letter dated 26th October, 2020 with reference ICPC/CH/CSU.TA/353/2020.
Not satisfied with the response, the Chamber wrote a second letter dated 22nd August, 2022 and requeste for an investigation into the award of the said contract.
In the letter, it stated categorically that Blueprint Business Technologies Limited scored zero over ten (0/10) in the financial bid evaluation only for the Bureau of Public Procurement, seeing that it could not justify and defend their decision, fabricated an 8.84/10 score.
The letter entitled “RE: Request to investigate the CBN management over corrupt practices and breach of the Procurement Act in the award of contract for CBN/NDIC project on regulatory and reporting solution” reads:
The Chamber, while trying to set the record-straight based on the facts available at its disposal, averred that the report obtained by ICPC from the Bureau of Public Procurement “was desperately assembled and tailored to justify the fraudulent outcome of the tender” in favour of the Blueprint Business Technologies Limited.
It stressed that according to the parameters set by the CBN, the determining factor to win the tender was said to have been predicated on two pillars which are the Technical Evaluation and Cost Evaluation.
However, it noted, “according to the analysis made available to your Commission, the mark allocated to the Financial Bid was downplayed to a barest minimum of 10% notwithstanding that Financial Bid was one of the two legs upon which a valid tender stands, whereas 20% was allocated to the committee’s visit to the vendors’ offices which was just a unit under Technical Bid and 90% was fraudulently allocated to the first leg which was the Technical Bid.
“Instead of ranking both pillars i.e. Financial Bid and Technical Bid equally, (an act which ordinarily would have eliminated the purported winner from the tender), the Financial Bid was unfairly downgraded in order to provide a plausible and specious defence for the winner’s emergence,” Falana & Falana’s Chambers stated.
It pointed out that the CBN had earlier declared that both its client and Blueprint Business Technologies Limited passed the technical evaluation and that the only hurdle to be crossed in order to win the tender was the cost evaluation which at that stage would be the deciding factor in the award of the contract.
The Chambers stated further: “It may interest you to know that the Blueprint Business Technologies Limited scored zero (0/10) in the financial bid evaluation and because the Bureau of Public Procurement could not justify and defend their decision, they fabricated an 8.84/10 score as reflected in your reply, because it is unjustifiable that a company that scored zero in the financial bid eventually won the contract.
“Moreover, it is not the practice to award a contract to a company without a Financial Bid In a Competitive Tender. It is not out of place to contend that there is more to the assessment report than what it shows.
“Blueprint Business Technologies Limited scored zero in the Financial Bidding only because the CBN did not have access to tenderers’ Financial Bid information until the envelopes were opened. Hence, the 0/10 scored.
“The Quality and Cost Selection Method means that a successful tenderer must pass both the Quality test and Cost test criteria. As a result, the presentation by the CBN and BPP to your Commission looks normal based on the fraudulent points allocated.” Read More…
The petitioners put it to ICPC that if the document passed to the Commission had shown that Blueprint Business Technologies got zero over ten (0/10), its position would not have been the same and made bold to say that the BPP initially could not subscribe to the assessment criteria.
Also, they pointed out that the CBN could not produce assessment score sheets of members of the committee, so it tried vigorously to justify the failure to produce the sheets with a flimsy explanation that the scores were put on excel sheet and that they could not retrieve same.
“Had the Committee members’ individual assessment spreadsheet been produced, it would have further revealed the doggy practices that marred the overall bidding process,” the emphasised.
According to the attached Certified True Copy of the Bureau of Public Procurement report, the Chamber cited its client’s dismay that notwithstanding that the Financial Bid of Blueprint Business Technologies Limited was well above the financial threshold of the contract, it reviewed the value of the contract simultaneously as the contract was awarded, the review attracted additional cost of about N2,520,000,000 representing 78% of the supposed contract value.
The letter stated further: “The bids submitted by the vendors, including Blueprint Business Technologies Limited, covered training and was in line with the tender guidelines and requirements.
“Also, there is an element of fraud and/or misrepresentation in the document/committee report review provided whereby the cost of training with an allocation of 340 million naira was separated from the entire contract cost thereby giving a wrong picture of the amount that the contract was awarded for.
“The addition of about N3.30 billion that they claimed to have awarded the contract for to Blueprint Business Technologies Limited plus the cost of training of about N340 million and the cost due to review amounts to about N6,160,000,000.
“While any variation could not be justified based on the exchange rate because tender was strictly in local currency, BPP report technically signposted that the fraudulent way the CBN could take to get approval for the 78% increase above contract value.
“That the review was more than 15% of the contract and more than N1 billion, and as a result of this, the 1st Defendant was asked to comply with the directive of Secretary to the Government of the Federation by getting initial approval from the Presidency before processing “NO OBJECTION” certificate to effect the additional payment.
“There is no basis for the 78% cost review of the contact sum. It may interest you to know that the CBN in response to our letter of request for the certificate of completion of the project, since the timeframe for the completion of the project has since elapsed, wrote to us that there was no certificate of completion and that the contract had been terminated.
“Although, this revelation was not surprising since the Blueprint Business Technologies Limited lacked the capacity and wherewithal to perform the contract from the onset ab initio.”
The petitioners, therefore, requested ICPC to investigate the award of the contract as it was marred by corruption and fraud of monumental proportion.
They also urged the Commission to review the huge fund that has been criminally diverted by Blueprint Business Technologies Limited for the contract that has since been terminated since the contract was terminated due to gross incompetence.
In conclusion, they recommended that the contract be awarded to them as they had met the requirements.
News Band reached out to CBN to balance the report throught three of its email addresses but has yet to receive a response at the moment of this publication. Continue Reading…
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