The Project Manager of a Chinese civil engineering and construction
company, Etim Abak, on Monday told the Senate Committee on the Federal
Capital Territory that former President Olusegun Obasanjo awarded the
Abuja Rail Project in 2007 without an engineering design or a Memorandum
of Understanding.
The Minister of FCT and current governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir
el-Rufai, allegedly signed the $841.645,898m contract based on an
uncalculated estimate.
The committee was also told that the contract, which was for
60.67-kilometre rail project, was inflated by $10m per km and that the
length was later reduced to 45km without refund of the cost for the
15.67 km that was dropped off from the project.
The Senate committee, led by Dino Melaye, who were at the site of the
project to carry out oversight functions, therefore, demanded the refund
of $195,878,296.74 being the amount for the 15.67km that was cut out,
from the Chinese firm handling the project.
Abak told senators that the contract was signed by the then FCT minister
without design and MoU, and that it was carried out based on conceptual
design.
Abak said,
“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.”
Melaye said his findings revealed that the rail project was inflated by
over $10m per km and wondered why such an act was perpetrated by the
handlers of the project.
The senator added that the contract sum was $841.645,898m and that the
project completion period was 48 months while the scope of work was
60.67km standard gauge, with double railway tracks and associated
permanent way within the FCT.
He wondered why the 60.67km project was later reduced to 45. 245km without reduction in its cost.
He said,
“Now, you have reduced the length of the standard gauge from 60.67km to
45.245km, meanwhile, there is no concomitant reduction if you juxtapose
the length in kilometres and the reduction in terms of the cost.
“If we are to spend $841m for 60.67km and now you have reduced to
45.245km and the only reduction in terms of monetary value is from
$841.6m to $823m and with a reduction of just about $17m, that to me is
not commensurate to the reduction in terms of length.
“The Federal Government has so far invested N31.5bn and another N7.6bn
from the SURE-P fund and if you put these together, we have altogether
N39.1bn invested in the rail project, leaving the balance of N113.
233,155.32.
“The N3bn proposed in the 2016 national budget for the FCT was 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 the cost of railway project in Nigeria is on a very high side.”
Punch
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