Atiku fingers FG over severed ties with INTELS

Former Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused the Federal Government of Nigeria of going after his business in a statement released on Monday, January 4, by Paul Ibe, his spokesman.

“Co-founder of Integrated Logistics Services Nigeria Limited (Intels), Atiku Abubakar, has been selling his shares in Intels over the years. It assumed greater urgency in the last five years, because this government has been preoccupied with destroying a legitimate business that was employing thousands of Nigerians because of politics,” the statement read.

It further read: “He has sold his shares in Intels and redirected his investment to other sectors of the economy for returns and creation of jobs.”

This comes as the former vice president severed ties with INTELS Nigeria Limited, an oil and gas logistics firm he co-founded almost 40 years ago, after selling his shares worth $60 million in the holding company.

INTELS said it severed ties with Atiku and his family, who was one of its major shareholders, after the former vice president sold off his shares and exited the company last year.

In a statement on Monday, Tommaso Ruffinoni, INTELS spokesman, said Atiku, through his trust named Guernsey Trust International, sold shares of Orlean-Invest Group, Intels’ holding company, between December 2018 and January 2019, for a sum of approximately $60 million.

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INTELS was founded in 1982, six years before the holding company was established in 1988.

“In the period between April and May 2020, Atiku Abubakar converted his remaining shares into a convertible bond that he subsequently monetised up to a residual sum of approximately $29 million.

“When he requested to cash in the above mentioned sum our Group contested to Atiku Abubakar a debt, towards our Group, of $24.1 million. Without having received any answer regarding the matter, on 30th of November 2020 Atiku Abubakar was informed about the set off of such sum while we made available the remaining sum of $5.4 million,” Ruffinoni said.

“With the completion of the above mentioned transactions, the era of Atiku Abubakar family’s involvement with the Group Orlean-Intels is over.

“On 1st December 2020, our Group terminated also the working relationship with Atiku Abubakar’s sons, Adamu Atiku Abubakar and Aminu Atiku Abubakar, and since that date our Group does not have any contacts, neither direct nor indirect, with members of Atiku Abubakar’s family,” he stated.

Meanwhile, while the former vice president is insisting that there should be a difference between politics and business, he said he was redirecting his investment to other sectors of the economy for returns and creation of jobs.

Recall that after years of tussle with Intels, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) in September 2020 terminated its service boat contract with Intels, one of the company’s most lucrative source of revenue after terminal operation and management of oil and gas free zone.

With the termination, the boat service operations previously handled by Third-Party Company, which is Intels Nigeria Limited, was to be directly handled by the NPA even though the move was interrupted by court order.

In 2010, the Intels was contracted by the NPA to provide boat monitoring and supervision services and collect revenue on its behalf, at 72:28 percent sharing formula. Here, NPA earned 72 percent of the revenue while the remaining 28 percent went to INTELS.

To implement the contract, which was due to elapse in 2020, INTELS said it entered into loan agreements at the tune of $1.4 billion (N428.4bn), with several Nigerian banks based on the understanding that the debt would be offset from monies realised from the execution of the contract, which was paid directly to the banks.

According to Intels, it took pilotage or boat service from a revenue stream of a few thousand dollars per month to multimillion dollars per month. “Before INTELS entered into the joint venture agreement, the NPA was realising little above $6 million per annum but INTELS moved up the revenue profile to over $200 million per annum.”

Surprisingly, crisis ensued when NPA in September 2017 suddenly announced the termination of the contract on the premise that INTELS refused to pay revenue generated from the contract into the Treasury Single Account (TSA) of the Federal Government.

The NPA insisted that 100 percent of the revenue generated by Intels should be paid into TSA while the NPA would be the one to be paying Intels its 28 percent instead of deducting the 28 percent from source. The company was said to have refused NPA offer on the basis of the loan agreement it had with several Nigerian banks at the beginning of the contract.

However, both parties NPA and Intels were able to settle their dispute out of court. “INTELS has agreed to pay all the debts through the TSA platform. In fact, they have apologised for what they did,” Usman was quoted saying in the media report, when the issue was resolved in late 2017.