An investigative committee of the House of Representatives has accused key officials in the Federal government of signing empty loan repayment documents in their eagerness to obtain Chinese loans in the name of Nigeria using the Railway Sector as an excuse.
According to the lawmakers, officials of the Ministry of Transportation also appended signatures to a contract worth $33 billion without clear financial or payback arrangements and provision of local content in the contract agreement.
According to the Chairman of the House Committee on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements, Hon. Ossai Nicholas Ossai, some of the loan agreements had been signed by Nigerian Government officials before the loan terms were negotiated with the Chinese.
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Hon. Ossai accused government officials of being desperate to obtain Chinese loans without proper scrutiny as he decried the misconceptions surrounding the scrutiny of agreements surrounding the loans by the National Assembly.
According to the lawmaker;
“We have also noted comments on the facts that National Assembly approved these loans, so why turn around to probe it now? Well, I remember stating in our last meeting here, that executive scrutiny and oversight by the legislature on government policies, programmes and projects can be done at the beginning, during implementation and at the end of implementation.
“From our experience, the MDAs sign these commercial agreements in billions of dollars, then go the President and Federal Executive Council for approval to execute including securing loan facilities through Ministry of Finance and Debt Management Office (DMO) and then proceed to negotiate the terms of these loans before coming back to Mr. President who then writes the National Assembly asking for approval for billions of dollars to do projects without attaching the negotiated loan and commercial contracts agreements details.
“This approach is the reason we have government representatives signing empty pages of loan agreements repayment schedule and other key documents required for the loan agreements to become effective. We have commercial contracts signed in US Dollars, while the loan agreements for the execution of the same contracts were signed in Chinese YUAN currency in Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy/Galaxy Backbone Limited.
“We have also seen references made in the commercial contracts regarding BOQs but none of‘ the commercial, contracts agreements submitted to us especially by Ministry of Transport has a single BOQ attachment.
“We have noticed from documents available to us that commercial contracts process signed by Federal Ministry of Transport alone within this is over $33 billion without any clear cut financing arrangements. Most of these commercial contracts agreements didn’t also have local content clauses and were witnessed by no properly designated and authorised officials.
“There are observable issues relating to procurement process, evidences of 15% advanced payments, payment of management fees, drawdown process and remittances and a whole lot of other matters, which we are strongly poised to ask questions on and hope to get honest answers that will finer tune the current process, plan for possible negotiation of some these governments in order to serve Nigerians better.”
In his response, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi denied the accusations saying no rogue contracts existed in his ministry. He said his Ministry is only responsible for a $1.6 billion loan being used for the Lagos/Ibadan Rail Project as well as another $800 million loan taken under the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
He challenged the legislative committee to provide details to the contract agreements in question so that his Ministry can make an appropriate response.