By AHMED MUSA

There was outrage in the House of Representatives on Monday, as some officials of Premium Steel Company staged a walkout on the House Committee on Steel during an investigative hearing on the collapse of the $1.89 billion Delta Steel Company (DSC).

Spread out on a large expanse of land between the Owvian and Aladja communities and the Warri River in Udu local council area of Delta State, DSC, commissioned in 1980, was acquired by Global Infrastructure Nigeria Limited (GINL) in 2005, and later by Premium Steel and Mines Limited, an Indian firm.

At the botched hearing on Monday, leaders from the Delta communities also called for the revocation of the sale of the company to Premium Steel.

The community representatives in their submission alleged mismanagement of the facility by Premium Steel..

This was also as the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) frowned at the company, saying it was into other businesses other than steel production.

The drama began when a representative of the company was called to give their submission.

Premium Steel lawyer, Essien Andrew, SAN, took the podium to give their position and take questions, but was turned down by the lawmakers, who insisted it must be a top official of the firm.

Immediately after that, without any notice an Indian Director, who accompanied Andrew and another lawyer, stood up and walked out of the venue of the hearing.

The development, which led to the suspension of the hearing, caused an outrage amongst lawmakers and members of the Delta communities as they shouted names at the Premium Steel officials.

Chairman of the Committee on Steel, Abdullahi Halims described what Premium Steel did as “criminal.”

The committee therefore summoned the Managing Director of the company to appear before it on Wednesday November 3 or be dealt with in line with the law.

Chairman of Udu local government area of Delta State, Jite Brown, said the present management had run down the company.

He alleged that officials were also selling off 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 said 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 on 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.

Committee Chairman, Hon. Halims who expressed dismay at the attitude of Premium Steel said, “You can all see this, 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”, Hon. Halims said. (Daily Independent)

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