The House of Representatives Committee on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements and the Federal Ministry of Transport on Monday disagreed over commercial contract figures signed by the ministry.
The Chairman of the committee, Nicholas Ossai (PDP-Delta), at a public hearing in Abuja, said the ministry had signed commercial contracts worth $33 billion without clear cut financing arrangements .
Mr Ossai said the essence of the probe is to get clarifications on all the agreements.
He said that there were more than 500 loans and bilateral agreements between Nigeria and other governments and international organisations.
“Most of these commercial contracts agreements didn’t also have local content clauses and there were no witnesses and designated and authorised officials.
“There are observable issues relating to procurement process evidence of 15 per cent advanced payments, payment of management fees, draw down process and remittances and a whole lot of other matters.
“We are strongly poised to ask questions and hope to get honest answers that will fine-tune the current process, plan for possible renegotiation of some of these agreements in order to serve Nigerians better,” he said.
Reacting,the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi revealed that only a contract of $1.6 billion was awarded by the present administration in the Ministry of Transportation as against the allegations by the committee chairman, Hon. Nicholas Ossai that there was a $33 billion contract awarded by the present administration.
“Mr Chairman, there is no $33bn contract in the Ministry of Transportation. What we have is $1.6b awarded by this government for Lagos-Ibadan, for which the Chinese government is providing $1.2b and we are providing the remaining $400m.”
On the allegations that local content was not observed in the course of the project,The Minister said over 20,000 workers were engaged for the ongoing construction of Lagos-Ibadan rail project.
This, he said is in compliance with the local content law inherent in the 1.6B dollar contract agreement between Nigeria and China.
He said, “There are over 20,000 Nigerian workers employed for the construction of the Lagos-Ibadan railway project, only 560 of the workers on that project are Chinese,” adding that most materials for the project were locally sourced except for those that were manufactured outside Nigeria.
Amaechi restated that the coastal rail project may not sail through if the House committee continues its investigations on the project before the loan is granted.
