– While there was reduction in the length of the project, the cost remained unchanged.
– Mallam Nasiru El-Rufai signed the contract.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president and Mallam Nasir El-Rufai have been implicated in an Abuja rail project which was reportedly overestimated. The Punch reports that Etim Abak, the project manager of a Chinese civil engineering and construction company told a Senate committee on Monday, February 15 that Obasanjo awarded the Abuja rail project in 2007 without an engineering design or a Memorandum of Understanding. El-Rufai, the then minister of the Federal Capital Territory reportedly signed the $841.645, 898m contract based on an un calculated estimate.
Senator Dino Melaye,, who led the Senate committee to the site of the project was informed 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. However there was no refund of the cost for the 15.67 km that was dropped off from the project.
The committee 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 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.” Senator Melaye wondered why the project was reduced without reduction in the cost. “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.
“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 $500m 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 km, none is above $4m per km. Why is the Nigerian project costing $13.8m approximately $14m?” In a related development, following an alleged land grab scandal rocking Nigeria’s state capital, the Senate said it will see to it that Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan as well as ministers who served under them are investigated.
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