BOLANLE Onagoruwa, the director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprise, was on Tuesday quietly relieved of her appointment as head the office in charge of the privatization of Nigeria’s national assets.
Mrs. Onagoruwa’s sack comes after months of intense scrutiny by the National Assembly, some of whose members have called for her outright dismissal.
An ad-hoc committee in the Senate constituted to review the work of the Bureau had recommended that she be relieved of her appointment, pointing at what it called her incompetence in her position as the directional-general of the organization.
The committee also cited what it described as the “illegal and fraudulent sale” of the five per cent residual shares belonging to the federal government at Eleme Petrochemicals Company Limited.
Malam Umar Sani, a special assistant to Vice President Namadi Sambo on media matters, said in a statement issued on Tuesday that her sack takes immediate effect.
Mrs. Onagoruwa will hand over the affairs of the Bureau to Benjami Dikki, who is a director at the Bureau, the statement said. Dikki will run the Bureau in acting capacity.
As is the case with such termination of appointments, the statement went on to express the president’s gratitude to Mrs. Onagoruwa.
Mrs. Onagoruwa is the fourth head of the Bureau which has sold over a hundred government assets in deals which the then senate investigative panel considered highly questionable because of favoritism and corruption.
In its 172-page report on the affairs of the organization, which was adopted in its entirety by the Senate, the committee also asked the National Council on Privatization to reprimand Onagoruwa’s predecessors who include, Nasir El-Rufai, Julius Bala, and Irene Nkechi Chigbue.
With Onagoruwa’s sack on Tuesday, the legislators had their way.