BPE Boss Seeks Closer Ties with ICRC

Wed, Mar 2, 2016
By publisher
2 MIN READ

BREAKING NEWS, Business

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VINCENT Onome Akpotaire, acting director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, wants closer ties between the Bureau and the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission, ICRC, to service the Nigerian economy.

Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday, March 1, 2016 when he led other management staff of the Bureau on a courtesy visit to Adamu Diko, director-general of the ICRC, the BPE boss said though the two agencies had distinct roles, it was incumbent on them to collaborate and synergise for the benefit of the federal government’s reforms and infrastructure development programme.

Akpotaire said that though there was a need for the two organisations to adhere to their terms of engagement for the benefit of Nigerians, “BPE has a long history of brown field concession which cannot be wished away.”

He decried the notion by some ministries, departments and agencies, MDAs, of a strained relationship between the BPE and the ICRC, saying the situation had rubbed off negatively on the mandate of the two agencies. He noted that some MDAs had used such seeming friction to frustrate genuine effort at synergy, thus hurting the national economic growth and infrastructure development.

The acting DG said the BPE and the ICRC must collaborate to privatise all the enterprises that were scheduled in the BPE Act and that all the obstacles militating against the realisation of the objective must be tackled. He said: “we need to sustain interaction and evolve a strong bond and erase that perception of a frosty relationship between the two agencies.”

He said as a first step, both agencies should form joint project advisory teams, JPATs, and define roles of agencies and engage the MDAs that interface with both organisations.

Earlier, Diko said that the BPE and ICRC were partners, noting that the BPE was the engine room for the reforms and privatisation programme of the federal government. He said that the activities of the Bureau had given rise to many agencies, including the ICRC.

He pledged his organization’s cooperation with the BPE to change the destiny of Nigeria and “not that of individuals”.

The DG recalled that both organizations have had cordial relationship in the past as most of the foundation staff of the ICRC were drawn from the BPE.

—  Mar 2, 2016 @ 15:55 GMT

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