Amaechi Sacked Me To Protect Atiku’s Interest – Hadiza Bala Reveals In New Book “Stepping on Toes”

Former Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Hadiza Bala Usman has revealed that one of the reasons her former boss, the then Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, “masterminded” her removal from office, was because of the failure to extend Intels’ service boat management contract.

Gatekeepers News reports that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and presidential candidate of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, co-founded Integrated Logistics Services Limited, otherwise known as Intels, with an Italian-born Nigerian businessman Gabriele Volpi in the 1980s.

Although the tenor ended in August 2020 by effluxion of time, Abubakar, however, divested from the country’s largest logistics company in December 2020 in an apparent move to join the 2023 presidential race on a clean slate.

According to the book, the company, which monitored all oil and gas logistic movements of service boats, was appointed by the NPA as monitoring agents for service boat operations in all the pilotage districts since December 1997.

The agency was renewed in 2003, 2007 and 2011 when its tenor was extended to ten years, terminating in August 2020.

Bala Usman, in the new book titled “Stepping on Toes: My Odyssey at the Nigerian Ports Authority”, claimed Amaechi held personal grudges against her because she failed to dispense favours. She alleged that the former Minister said this much to some people who tried to mediate on the matter.

“Interest groups and leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) also tried to intervene. I know, for instance, that Governors elected on the platform of the APC, chaired by Governor Atiku Bagudu, deliberated on the issue of my suspension and constituted a committee to intervene,” the former NPA chief wrote in the book.

“The Governors’ team met the Minister to discuss a resolution of the matter. He insisted that my management of the NPA had to be investigated because of the amount unremitted to the CFR (Consolidated Federation Revenue). He even tried to sway the governors’ resolve by suggesting to them that the budget of the NPA was bigger than most of their state budgets, so they shouldn’t bother about me.

“When the governors persisted, he told them that the matter was no longer within his purview and that they may need to approach the Head of Service of the Federation.

“He told another person who tried to intervene that I was so so selfish that I did nothing for him from the NPA, and never even gave him a birthday present!”

Bala Usman also claimed to have had a personal reconciliatory meeting with the Minister during which Amaechi accused her of writing directly to the President without recourse to the minister.

She said the former Minister told her that he took the steps against her because he no longer wanted her in the office and asked that she resigned voluntarily or challenge her suspension in court.

“I told him I wasn’t going to do either especially now that the probe panel was in place,” the author wrote in the memoir.

“The public service does not in fact accept resignations from staff under probe. I was convinced that doing either would make me appear guilty. I told him that I would rather wait for the panel to complete its task and present their findings, as I was sure I had done nothing wrong.”

Upon rejecting Amaechi’s advice, Bala Usman claimed that the former Minister “then told me that he would ensure that the investigation went on until 2022 when political activities would have started, and the president would not remember that I was still on suspension. He said what mattered to him was that I was no longer the MD of the NPA.”

Bala Usman who stated in the book also that an unnamed stakeholder in the industry had warned her that the minister would want her out of office when two important contracts were due for renewal.

“At this point, it occurred to me what that stakeholder said about the minister wanting me out of office at the point that two of the most important contracts in the authority were due for renewal.

“The first of this was the capital dredging contract and the second: the service boat management contracts. While the minister had demanded an extension of tenure of the companies providing the capital dredging services without due process, he got approval for the restoration of an expired service boat contract. He got this even though the company was owing the federal government, had violated the Treasury Single Account policy, and above all, no longer had any contract with the NPA. I thought that his desperation to keep me out of office was to an end,” she wrote in the book.

Explaining why she went against Intels, Bala Usman said the company had been shortchanging Nigeria for years and it refused to comply with the presidential directive on Treasury Single Account, TSA.

“We, however, got confrontational with Intels performance on the service boat operation contract when the company persistently and blatantly refused to comply with the directive to pay revenues due to the NPA into the Treasury Single Account (TSA) in accordance with the policy of the Federal Government,” she wrote.

“On assumption of duty as President and Commander in Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, on 29 May 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari instructed that all revenues of the government must be remitted into the Treasury Single Account. Although this was known to everyone doing business with government in Nigeria, we discovered that the immediate past management had drawn the company’s attention to this fact and demanded action.

“For instance, on 29 June 2016, before my appointment as Managing Director, the then Executive Director, Finance and Administration, Mr. Olumide Oduntan wrote to the company asking that all revenues collected on behalf of the NPA must be paid into the TSA sub account with the CBN. This directive was ignored!

“I found the conduct of Intels unacceptable and in fact preposterous in a constitutional democracy. But we hadn’t heard the last of it. For the next 14 months, we tried to convince Intels to comply with this directive without result. It was like some people in the organisation had concluded that regulations were of no effect in Nigeria and that government could only bark without biting. So, the company continued to collect revenues on behalf of the federal government, deduct its 28% commission, deduct the payment for the amortisation of constructing Onne 4B and Eko support facilities to its sister companies and then pay the balance into one of the NPA accounts in a commercial bank.

“The sheer audacity was unbelievable and by May 2017, we felt we already had enough of it. On 31 May 2017, we wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami to seek legal advice on how to deal with the dilemma.”

Gatekeepers News reports that Bala Usman was suspended from office in May 2021 following allegations of the NPA’s non-remittance of about N165bn operating surpluses into the Consolidated Revenue Fund Account of the federation.

President Muhammadu Buhari approved her suspension following a request for the probe of the accounts of the NPA initiated by Amaechi who subsequently set up an administrative panel of inquiry to investigate the affairs of the NPA, including awards of contracts from 2016 to May 2021.

Amaechi also asked the panel to “examine and investigate compliance with communication channels as obtained in the public service.”

The investigation which lasted for about nine months returned without proof of non-remittance. Bala Usman was still removed from office and replaced with Mohammed Bello-Koko, who served as her Executive Director, Finance and Administration under her.