The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC might storm Ota farm and Kaduna State to interrogate former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT and current Kaduna Governor, Nasir EL- Rufai, over allegation of Abuja Rail way contract fraud.
This is coming after the Senate Committee on FCT on Monday, February 15, disclosed that Obasanjo and El-Rufai, awarded the Abuja Rail Project in 2007 at an inflated cost, with neither a design nor Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, with the Chinese Civil Engineering and Construction Company, CCECC.
The committee said the contract, which stood at 60.67 kilometers, was inflated by ten million dollars per kilometers even as the original length of the project was later reduced to 45 kilometers without refund of the cost for the 15.67 kilometers cut off.
As at press time, efforts made by Post-Nigeria to confirm the planned interrogation of the duo from the spokesman of the EFCC proved abortive.
The Committee Chairman, Senator Dino Melaye, has demanded the refund of the sum of 195,878,296.74 dollars being the sum allegedly funneled into private pockets.
Meanwhile, the Project Manager of the company, Etim Abak, said the contract was signed by the then FCT Minister without design and MOU, saying it was carried out based on what he simply identified as conceptual design.
“The contract was awarded based on conceptual design and estimates were not properly done. There was no formal design submitted and rail bridges and crossover bridges were not captured in the contract, “he told the committee,’’ Abak said.
Melaye, while speaking at the site, said his research showed that the rail project was inflated by over ten million dollars per kilometer, wondering why such corrupt act was perpetrated by the handlers of the project.
Melaye, said the entire project was shrouded in fraud, noting that the contract sum was $841.645,898 with project completion period put at 48 months.
“Now, you have reduced the length of the kilometre standard gauge from 60.67 kilometres to 45.245 kilometres, meanwhile, there is no concomitant reduction if you juxtapose the length of kilometres and the reduction in terms of the cost.
“If we are to spend 841 million dollars for 60.67 kilometres and now you have reduced to 45.245 kilometres and the only reduction in terms of monetary value is from 841.6 million dollars to 823 million and with reduction of just about 17 million dollars that to me is not commensurate to the reduction in terms of length.
“The Federal Government has so far invested 31.5 billion dollars and another 7.6 billion from the SURE-P fund and if you put these together, we have altogether 39.1 billion dollars invested in the rail project, leaving the balance of 113. 233,155.32 dollars.
“The sum of three billion dollars proposed in the 2016 national budget of the FCT for the rail project.
“If you look at this, I would want to say that I did a personal research and looked at rail construction of the same specifics, of the same technology across the globe and one cannot but complain that this railway project in Nigeria is on a very high side.” He said.
Melaye also questioned the rationale behind the government’s loan of 500 million dollars from Exim Bank of China for the project, adding that funds injected into the project by the federal government was far enough to execute the entire project.
“From my own calculation, in fact, from my comparison with other rail projects across the world, the federal government investment in this project is enough to execute the project without taking a loan as high as 500 million dollars from China.
”From our research and it’s very simple, the world is now a global village. As you are sitting here now, on your phone you can Google, even in India and Egypt. Fortunately, one of those projects in Zambia was also done by this same company, CCE.
“We have six countries and the average cost per kilometre, none is above four million dollars per kilometre. Why is the Nigerian project is costing 13.8 approximately 14 million dollars per kilometer,” Melaye stated.