By Gift Chapi Odekina
The House of Representatives on Monday summoned the Managing Director of Premium Steel and Mine Company limited, Idries Pandor to appear before it on Wednesday or face the wrath of the law.
Chairman, House committee on Steel, Hon. Abdullahi Halims gave the directive following a walk out staged by Premium Steel and Mine Company limited representatives which led to a rowdy session of a public hearing on Monday in Abuja as organised by the House committee on Steel.
The rowdiness started when the committee had requested the view of Premium Steel and Mine Company limited following the outcry of the host community on the alleged mismanagement of the Steel Company by Premium Steel Company after being handed over by Asset Management Company of Nigeria but the Counsel to the company, Essien Andrew SAN who represented the company at the hearing was shut down from speaking by the committee based on the rule of the committee that only the managing director were authorised.
President of Aladja Community Udu local government area, Delta State, Ottoo Ogbiruveta and other youth were seen confronting and threatening to shutdown the Premium Steel and Mine Company limited representatives while they stage a walk out of the committee.
Earlier in his submission at the hearing, Chairman of Udu local government area of Delta State, Jite Brown, explained that the present management had run down the company.
Brown alleged that officials were also selling of items that belong to the company.
He called on the government to revoke the sale of DSC to Premium Steel.
A representative of chiefs from the area, Bernard Okiete Nafaga, also testified that the company had failed to live up to expectations, and that the government should take over to resuscitate it.
Also youth leader of the area, Dapkos Daniel Damijo alleged there was a lot of pillaging going in the company and called on relevant law enforcement agencies to look into the matter.
“I want FG to resuscitate the plant by revoking the agreement given to Premium Steel to run the plant,” he said.
Acting Director Industries and Communications, Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) Larai Bode, said the outfit was privatized in 2005.
She said, “The Federal privatized 80 percent of DSC equity to Global Infrastructure. It was privatized in 2005 to Global. Before the privatization process, it underwent two processes. The first advertisement did not yield much desired results, then it was advertised a second time where BUA emerged as the preferred bidder, but due to unresolved issues with BUA, the FG resolved to engage the willing-seller-willing-buyer strategy.
“During that process, Global Infrastructure was engaged and the company was sold to them at the price of $30 million. Global took over the management of the company in 2005 and they did not commence immediate operations because they needed to fix up the machinery because at the time it was privatized the company was not in production. So they were able to fix and then operated for about eight months and then it shut down.
“Global Infrastructure took loans from about eight banks amounting to over 30 billion naira. So AMCON came up and took over the company because the management of Global could not pay those loans. So based on their mandate AMCON appointed receiver-managers and the receiver-manager negotiated with Premium Steel and sold the company to them. During that process, BPE was not involved and we are not happy with what is happening. Premium Steel are not into production, but rather they are into different bushiness which is not known to BPE.”.
A lawyer from the legal department of AMCON, Albert Nwanozie, said they did not take over the running of the company, but only took over the assets charged to the loan.
“AMCON came into the picture as a result of the loan by Global. What we quickly did was to appoint a receiver-manager by virtue of our act and certain provisions of the debenture to take over the assets of DSC not the running of the company. We took over the assets charged to the loans that were borrowed and as a result of that we realized the loan that was taken. Strictly speaking we did not take over the running or management of Delta Steel. Whatever transpired beyond the loan that was taken we cannot say anything about that. We never took over DSC but the assets charged to the loan which AMCON acquired from the various banks and those assets are the assets AMCON is empowered to deal with and AMCON did deal with those assets,” he said.
Not satisfied with the attitude of the representatives of Premium Steel, the Committee Chairman Abdullahi Halims expressed saying, “You can all see the if I may say, the criminal behaviour of Premium Steel and everybody is embarrassed. They cannot walk out of the parliament because this committee is an offshoot of the Parliament and we cannot tolerate it by any standard.
“So in view of their criminal behavior, because all of us are here, all the honourable members are well seated here, the Minister is here, the representatives of the communities are here. Every critical stakeholder is present here. And for the Premium Steel management or whosoever they are called to have walked out of this Parliament, it is a disgrace to this nation.”
Recall that in 2019, the House of Representatives had mandated its committee on Steel to probe the sale of Delta Steel Company to Premium Steel and Mines Limited, after a motion by the member representing Ethiope federal constituency, Chief Ben Igbakpa was adopted.
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