The management of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), under the leadership of Godwin Emefiele, the suspended governor of the apex bank, 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.
News band 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.”
