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| CBN boss, Sanusi |
The German firm went into voluntary
liquidation in 2012 and was technically broke at home (in Europe) at the
material time that it got the contract in Nigeria.
Bundesdruckerei bought up Dermalog
for US$5.8 million, which amounted to 22. 3 per cent of its private placement
in stocks and sent the German firm riding in what is called the plus/minus
line. Dermalog is a small privately-owned company in Germany with a total of
60-70 employees.
Recently, it advertised positions
for 32 engineers for employment openings. The development has prompted industry
watchers to believe that Dermalog was building a new workforce to enable it
execute the Nigerian contract.
This is contrary to what CBN
Governor, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, told Nigerians last November when the firm was
shortlisted to provide a unique customer identification system for the apex
bank and the Bankers Committee.
“The process itself took time and
was extremely competitive as those who went through it will testify,” Sanusi
said during the contract signing ceremony, adding, “Up to the last point, I did
not know who was going to emerge. We had serious competition among two very
good companies."
Dermalog describes itself as “the
world’s leading manufacturer of automated fingerprint identification system
(AFIS)”. This is, however, not true as the firm’s total revenue in both AFIS
and in hardware in 2012 were a positive 10 per cent, up from US$26 million in
2011.
What this means is that the
CBN/Bankers’ Committee contract, which represents a 100 per cent increase in
the firm’s total revenue in 2012, actually amounted to handing Dermalog a
lifeline and raises the question over whether a company that is close to
bankruptcy is capable of handling a contract of such magnitude.
The CBN spends close to N192 billion
a year in managing the naira, which would be reduced considerably when the
Nigerian economy transits from a cash-based economy to electronic means of
payment.
The CBN spokesman, Ugochukwu
Okoroafor, however, in an interview with THISDAY denied that the German company
was bankrupt at the time the contract was signed, arguing that some diplomatic
staff of the German Embassy in Nigeria were in attendance when the contract was
eventually sealed.
He added that the German government
indeed owns 20 per cent equity in the company. He also forwarded the 2013
business tax registration certificate of Dermalog from the Revenue Office of
Hamburg “which only serves as evidence of registration as a taxpayer
(entrepreneur).”
President Goodluck Jonathan has said
it was unwieldy, costly and unsustainable for the country to “operate multiple
discordant databases and infrastructure”. He spoke in the State House when he
formally launched the national identity number (NIN) under the National Identity
Management Commission (NIMC) in October 2013. “Government cannot afford the
continued proliferation of data capture activities,” the president added.
The implication of this is that the
CBN contract to Dermalog 2013 was in direct contradiction of the presidential
directive for harmonisation and integration of biometric capture activities
only weeks later in November.
The action of the CBN governor
indeed prompted negative reactions by participants at a private sector forum in
Lagos in December 2013. Captains of industries in the country at the forum
involving the Nigerian American Chambers of Commerce did not only upbraid
Sanusi’s unprofessional conduct regarding biometric infrastructure acquisition
for banks in the country, but equally issued a communiqué asking the Bureau of
Public Procurement (BPP) not to approve any government agency expenditure
involving biometric systems which was not a part and parcel of the mainstream
infrastructure being managed by NIMC.
However, Okoroafor said at the
weekend, that the project was the collective decision of the CBN and the
Bankers’ Committee “to support one of the fastest growing economies of the
world.”
1 comment:
And what says our Mr. Holy-Than-Thou Sanusi to this?
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