Real Africa News

Atiku, El-Rufai In War Of Words Over NITEL Sale

A verbal feud has begun between a former vice president, Atiku Abubakar and the governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, over the controversial Pentascope deal through which the federal government tried to privatise Nigeria’s telecoms carrier, the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL).

Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai

The two politicians have been throwing verbal missiles at each while also accusing each other of corruption in a deal many believed was fraught with corruption, Abusidiqu reports.
El-Rufai who was the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) had in his book “The Accidental Public Servant”, shot the first jibe at Atiku suggesting that as chairman of the National Council on Privatization (NCP), he meddled in the privatisation of NITEL which ultimately truncated the process.
El-Rufai alleged that Atiku’s aggressiveness evidenced by his intrusion suggested that he had monetary interest in some of the deals.
However, Atiku who was entrusted with the responsibility of managing the privatization programme fired back saying that the former minister was bitter because a particular bidder, Motorola, lost out in one of the transactions.
According to The Punch, Atiku said: “the fact of the contract are like this: Obasanjo agreed with the NCP that the former BPE DG was wrong not to have disclosed his interest and that he had failed the test of transparency by not disclosing that his brother was on the board of Motorola.”