The Senate Committee on Public Accounts, on Tuesday, queried the propriety of awarding a fresh contract for the modernisation of the railway system when an earlier $528m rehabilitation contract was yet to be completed.

The Chairman of the committee, Senator Ahmed Lawan, also described as illegal, the withdrawal of money for the initial payment for the contract from the Excess Crude Account, without an Act of the National Assembly.

He said, “The contract was funded from illegitimate source, because the Excess Crude Account is illegal.”

Earlier, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, Mrs. Amina Ali, told the committee that the railway rehabilitation contract was awarded in 1995 at an initial cost of $528m to the Chinese firm, CCECC, out of which $446m had been paid. She said that as at 2003, the rehabilitation work was 80 per cent complete but that the company abandoned the site the same year due to non-funding.

On the modernisation programme, she said the contract was awarded to CCECC for the first phase of Lagos-Kano standard gauge for $8.3bn. She explained that the contract, which was on build, operate and transfer basis, was for a five-year period with 48 months as completion period, and that part of the funding for the modernisation project would be from $1.2bn loan to be secured from the Chinese government.

She said the Federal Executive Council approved the contract in 2006, while $250m was approved to be paid but that at the instance of the contractor, 30 per cent was made available in local currency.
Meanwhile, The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, raised questions on how the National Poverty Alleviation Programme spent the N2bn budgeted for the purchase of 4,444 tricycles in 2007.
At a meeting with officials of NAPEP and the House Committee on Poverty Alleviation in Abuja, the committee noted that there was no concrete evidence suggesting that the money was spent.

The Deputy Chairman of the committee, Mr. Rufus Omeire, observed that NAPEP had been unable to eradicate poverty in the country in spite of the huge spending on its projects over the years and threatened that the committee might recommend a review of the programme.

Source: Punch