From Fred Itua, Abuja
The Senate Committee on Sports, headed by Senator Obinna Ogba, has told the Infrastructure Regulatory Commission, Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) and the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC), to settle their disagreement with System Numeric out of court.
The committee gave the advice last Thursday when the feuding parties appeared before it. The advice is in line with the advice of the Attorney General of the Federation, who directed that the matter be settled out of court. The committee said the move was necessary to prevent Nigeria from further loss of over N3 trillion revenue being incurred annually due to the impasse.
Senators, while condemning the shenanigans of government agencies in the handling of the bid that led to the legal action, gave both parties two weeks within which they should settle out of court.
The Lottery Commission and the Bureau for Public Procurement allegedly shunned due process in the bidding process for the LPAAS contract.
System Numeric accused the Lottery Commission and Bureau for Public Procurement of violating due process in the bidding process for the contract as contained in the Act establishing the commission.
In compliance with the requirement spelt out during the bidding process in 2012, the company submitted a technical proposal in which the financial proposal was a section.
The other company submitted its technical and financial bids as separate documents in violation of Section 13, Page 17 of the Lottery Commission’s request for proposal, RFP.
According to documents available, the rival bidder failed to submit the performance bond as required, whereas System Numeric provided a performance bond of N500 million that was sourced from a bank.
Chief Executive Officer of System Numeric, Chief Athan Nneji Achonu, while briefing newsmen after the interface with the Committee gave an insight into what happened.
Achonu told newsmen: “It is a very sad day for me that I should come to this hallowed place to cry about a cabal that has been trying to hijack this process since 2012 and deny Nigeria of income of over N3 trillion.
“I won a contract to deploy this platform to monitor every lottery activity in this country. The first attempt they made was to bring in a fake company. This was taken to the House of Representatives and their verdict was that System Numeric was the only company that was qualified.
“They now changed tactics, started moving around from Italy to Spain; they will bring one group or the other. Management changed, but the same cabal would not budge. Because of their selfish interest, they have denied this country of tremendous revenue. That was why I had to cry to the Senate to give us justice.