By Segun Fatuase
With the release of the government white paper on the Independent Administrative Panel on the activities of the Projects Development Institute (PRODA), Enugu, watchers of the Research and Development Institutes (RDI) sector are waiting to see who blinks first between the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (FMSTI) and the Overseeing Director General (ODG) of the agency, Dr. Fabian Okonkwo, who has defied several directives from the ministry to call a meeting of the Governing Board.
According to well-informed sources who spoke under the cover of anonymity, following repeated refusals by the Chief Executive to accede to directives by the Chairman of the Board, Chief Emma Eneukwu, to invite members for a meeting, citing such spurious reasons as paucity of funds, the tight schedule of the Management team inspecting capital projects etc, the supervising ministry directed the Board to query Okonkwo, and he subsequently replied at his own convenience.
Our sources reveal that the Chief Executive of PRODA fired the first salvo, insisting that he would not allow the new Governing Board to hold a meeting the very day it was inaugurated along with the Boards of 11 other research institutes under the ministry last October 14.
Investigations revealed that shortly after the board’s inauguration, members retired to a location just a stone throw from the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Maitama, venue of the event in Abuja, principally to introduce one another and fix a date for the inaugural board meeting.
At the said meeting, when asked to fix a date for a meeting, Okonkwo reportedly told members of the new Board that he was part of a delegation being led by the Hon. Minister of State for Science, Technology and Innovation, Barrister Mohammed Hassan Abdullahi, to Antigua, for a science exhibition, adding that the earliest date the meeting could hold would be the third week of November 2021.
However, according to investigation, Board members discovered that the Federal Government delegation to the Caribbean island country had gone made the trip and returned to the country three months before the Board was inaugurated. Worse still, the ODG was not part of that delegation because his agency was not selected by the ministry for the trip, for which he collected over N6,000,000.
It was in view of this that the Chairman of the Board, by two letters on 26th October, directed him to provide the Board with some salient information to brief the Board on some issues addressed in some petitions it received and to call the statutory meeting on November 10.
Responding to this, through a petition dated 1st of November 2021, with Reference No. PDA/A/S.550/Vol.14/214, to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Dr. Okonkwo, reasoned that the Governing Board was over-reaching itself by attempting to look into petitions and complaints by aggrieved contractors, among others, arguing that the redress being sought was purely an administrative matter. He therefore sought clarification from the Office of the SGF on powers of the Board.
“It should be noted that whatever complaints there are from contractors or bidders on the procurement process ought to be channeled through the appropriate quarters as prescribed in the Procurement Act, and it is my firm understanding that the Board has no role to play in this redress process,” wrote the ODG.
According to stakeholders in the RDI sector and the Public Service, beyond the ODG seeking to be a judge in his own case, bypassing his supervising Ministry and sending a petition directly to the Office of the SGF was a gross violation of Public Service protocol.
In addition, he copied Mr. President, his supervising ministry (the Hon. Minister, Minister-of-State and Permanent Secretary), as well as the Independent Investigative Panel set up on PRODA by SGF, Director General, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), The Senate Committee on Public Procurement, House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement, Senate Committee on Science and Technology, the House Committee on Science Research Institutes, as well as the Chairman of the Governing Board.
The clarification sought by the Overseeing Director General was provided by the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation through a letter dated 1st December 2021 with Ref. No. FMST/HMST/LU/451/T2, which reprimanded him for disorderliness in bypassing his supervising Ministry.
The official communication to the ODG reads: “You are to note that all complaints you have in the course of doing your official work should be routed through the Ministry, being the supervisory body for the Institute. As provided by Section 8 of the Administrative Guidelines Relating to the Relationship Between Parastatals/Government-Owned Companies and the Government, which provides thus: A Chief executive who feels that his Board of Directors has misdirected itself, on a given policy issue, shall be free, on giving due notice to the Board, to refer the matter to the Minister responsible for the parastatals.
“Your action is therefore at variance with the administrative procedure of such communication.
“By extant rules, you are to be orderly on all staff matters, including execution of the 2021 contracts.
“You are therefore advised to adhere to the directives of the new Governing Board and its Chairman, provided such directives are lawful, for a smooth running of the Institute.”
The letter was signed by the Permanent Secretary, FMSTI, Mr. Edet Sunday Akpan.
Our investigation also stumbled on an earlier letter dated 22nd November 2021, through which the Ministry acceded to the Board members’ request to hold the meeting without their statutory allowances in view of paucity of funds as claimed by the ODG.
The letter, also signed by the Permanent Secretary, was concluded thus: “From the foregoing, I am directed by the Honourable Minister that you are to convene a Board meeting within seven days from the receipt of this letter, to address the urgent issues in PRODA…”
With Dr. Fabian Okonkwo still refusing to convene the meeting, all the members of the Governing Board, with the exception of the ODG who is the statutory Secretary of the Board, met in Abuja on the 7th of December 2021.
According to sources, although the ODG was invited to that meeting, he gave the excuse that he had a date with the EFCC in Enugu that same day. He was also said to have informed the EFCC that he would not be able to honour the invitation because he had a Board meeting in Abuja. But it was confirmed that he was in the office throughout that day, attending neither the Board meeting nor the EFCC invitation.
Responding to the resolutions adopted and signed by the 10 other members of the Board at their meeting in Abuja, the Ministry once again directed the ODG to convene the Board meeting not later than 10th of January this new year. The letter, dated 29th December 2021, was signed by the Honourable Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, who is the de facto employer of the embattled ODG.
Yet again, citing paucity of funds, the Chief Executive refused to comply with his directive, under the excuse that being so early in the new year, no budgetary overhead had been received. Through his letter of 5th January 2022 with Ref. No. PDA/A/S.550/Vol.IV, he ruled that there would be no Board meeting until “when there is overhead release for the year 2022 and not 10th January, 2022.”
Reporting this latest development to the Ministry via a four-page letter dated same 5th January 2022, Board Chairman Chief Eneukwu, with seeming frustration, had noted: “Regrettably, with utter disrespect and gross moral turpitude, the Overseeing Director General/CEO, PRODA, in his usual manner of utmost disregards to directives, has once again refused to adhere to the directive.”
In the letter, which went with 53 accompanying documents, the Chairman reeled out some of the complaints contained in the petitions against the ODG, as well as the Head of Finance and Accounts, Mr. Nebuwa Patrick, and the acting Head of Procurement, Mr. Ihunweze Chukwudi, which needed to be looked into by the Governing Board.
He made reference to a letter dated 30th November 2021 from the Office of the SGF, with the subject matter, “Re: Need to Investigate the Procurement Deception, Staff Victimization and Ongoing Management Problem in PRODA Enugu under the FMST (HR.01/02/2021),” which communicated a letter of April 2021 from the Clerk of the National Assembly on same matter.
Regrettably, the Chairman told the Hon. Minister that his Board “is incapacitated to investigate this matter because the Overseeing DG/CEO has deliberately decided to avoid meeting with the Governing Board members, and has willfully refused to adhere to all the instructions and directives issued to him with impunity.”
In conclusion, the Board Chairman says, “Dr. Fabian Okonkwo’s flagrant disregard for constituted authority is unacceptable. His actions are unbecoming of a public officer. We call for urgent action to save the Institute from further deterioration… All our actions are in line with the provisions of the law.”
However, as the seeming tug of letters continued, the Board Chairman acceded to the Ministry’s advice and reached out again to the ODG on January 10, asking him to forward his estimated budget for the meeting latest by the 12th of January and to “immediately schedule a meeting on or before Thursday 20th January 2022.”
Expectedly, our source said, the ODG declined the offer. While appreciating what he described as the “kind and sacrificial disposition” of the Board members, he said however that he would not borrow money to host Board meeting.
Beyond this, he used much of his letter of 13th January 2022 to accuse the Board of a hidden agenda.
His words: “It is obvious that all the decisions and actions of the current PRODA Board since it was inaugurated in October 2021 are calculated.”
Stakeholders and watchers of the RDI sector, especially PRODA affairs are unanimous that the allegations over which the substantive Chief Executive Officer of the Institute, Dr. Agulanna, was suspended after almost six years in office and which paved the way for Dr. Okonkwo to become Overseeing DG on 7th December 2020 are a child’s play when compared with the level of alleged atrocities which the 13-month tenure of the embattled ODG.
According to one of them who spoke anonymously, Okonkwo’s tenure has fetched PRODA so much negative publicity. “Under three months when he came into office during the tenure of the former Board, the House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement had to organize a public hearing on PRODA, advertising in a national daily calling for memoranda and inviting the public. Besides, he has been at loggerheads with virtually all stakeholders, including the Ministry, the Board, the National Assembly, contractors, staff and all.”
Some of his actions, they claim, have dragged the Institute into avoidable court cases and weekly visits to offices of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC).
The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), for instance, had through a letter dated 22nd November 2021, recommended PRODA under the ODG’s watch to ICPC for investigation after its own checks on the Institute’s management of capital projects.
The letter, signed by the Director General of the BPP, Mr. Mamman Ahmadu, says in part: “In view of several contraventions of the Public Procurement Act 2007 by PRODA, which appear to be deliberate, the Bureau hereby forward the outcome of its Procurement Audit exercise/findings to your office for further investigation and necessary action in line with Section 53(1) of the Public Procurement Act, 2007.”
With the fire-for-fire disposition of the ODG, observers are of the strong belief that only the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation can break the ice because, according to them, the battle is not really between him and the Board, but between him and his employers.