The Rainbow
Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi has continued to question the wisdom of the House of Representatives in conducting a probe into the Chinese loans used in financing the building of rail lines in Nigeria.
Amaechi believes that the probe now that the country is finalizing arrangements for $5 billion loan from the Asian country could jeopardize the securing of the loan and cripple the railway programmer being implement by the Federal Government.
Channels Telelision reports that the minister engaged the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Treaties, Agreements and Protocols, Nicholas Ossai in a heated argument on Monday.
The committee is investigating the $5 billion agreement between Nigeria and China for the Federal Government’s rail projects.
According to the report by the television house, Amaechi told members of the committee that Nigeria might not get the remaining loans from China because of the investigations being carried out by the House.
He accused the Committee of pursuing a political agenda, alleging that Ossai had approached him on the South-South Rail Project.
Following the increasing rise in Amaechi’s tone, the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, stormed the venue of the hearing and called for a 30-minute break.
The minister was later discharged and asked to reappear before the lawmakers on Tuesday at 12 noon.
This is the second time the Minister would be summoned before the Committee over the foreign loan meant for railway projects.
The minister said the Lagos-Ibadan rail project was currently under threat as a result of the ongoing probe by the House.
According to Amaechi, “In slight response to your speech earlier, I will repeat here that we need to be more patriotic than we are being. Mr. Chairman, I have the right to speak, you invited me, I was once a member of the House. If you say Minisitry of Transport has a contract $33 billion, we want to see it because as the Minister of Transport, the only contract awarded so far is $1.6 billion contract for Lagos-Ibadan which is under threat.”
Speaking further, the minister said, “Mr. Chairman the implication of having a contract of $33 billion dollars is that I will have a large number of workers. There’s no 33 billion dollars contract in ministry of transport. What we have is $1.6 billion contract awarded under President Buhari and 800 million contract awarded by Goodluck Jonathan. By the time we came, the contract awarded by Jonathan signed by Aganga had been completed 80% so we didn’t have to do the meeting of local content or no local content.
“The only one that have to deal with the issue of local content is the $1.6 billion contract that was awarded for Lagos to Ibadan. For which Chinese government is providing 1.2 billion and we’re providing the remaining $400 million dollars. There are over 20,000 workers and only 560 of them are Chinese, we need to begin to say the truth. It’s good to tell Nigerians the truth, this is very political and we will show all the contracts awarded by the PDP government.”
Amaechi, it will be recalled, while appearing before the House on July 29, had appealed to the National Assembly to halt its probe of the loan from the Chinese government in order not to truncate the projects envisioned under the loan.
He had said that such probes could send negative signals to the Chinese government that an arm of the government does not agree with the loan which might cause the government to withdraw it.
