Obasanjo awarded $841m Abuja rail project without engineering design, MoU- CCECC staff tells Senate panel

An official of the Chinese Civil Engineering and

Construction Company (CCECC) yesterday told a

Senate panel that Former President Olusegun

Obasanjo awarded the $841m Abuja rail project

without engineering design and Memorandum of

Understanding (MoU) in 2007. According to The Guardian Newspaper, CCECC's Project Manager, Etim Abak made the revelation

to the Senate Committee on Federal Capital

Territory (FCT) during an oversight to the project

site. Etim said the then Minister of FCT, Nasir el-

Rufai signed the contract on behalf of the federal

government. The Senate Committee discovered the contract,

which stood at 60.67 kilometres, was inflated by

$10 million (about N2 billion at N200 per dollar)

per kilometre even as the length was later reduced

to 45 kilometres without the refund of the cost for

the 15.67 kilometres dropped. Dino Melaye has demanded the refund of the of $195,878,296.74

( about N392 billion at N200 per dollar) being the

amount for the 15.67 kilometres cut out from the

Chinese Civil Engineering Construction Company

(CCECC), handling the project. The Project Manager of the company, Etim Abak,

while answering questions from members of the

committee, 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 a conceptual design. “The contract was awarded based on a

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. According to him, the contract sum was

$841.645,898 and 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 FCT. Melaye

alleged that the project whose length initially stood at 60.67 kilometres, was later reduced to

45.245 without cut in the cost of the project

initially paid for. "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 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 to $823

million and with reduction of just about $17

million dollars, that to me is not commensurate

with the reduction in length. The Federal Government has so far invested $31.5 billion and

another $7.6 billion from the SURE-P fund and if

you put these together, we have $39.1 billion

invested in the rail project, leaving the balance of

$113. 233,155.32million. The sum of $3 billion

dollars was proposed in the 2016 budget of the FCT for the rail project. I did a personal research

and looked at rail construction of the same

specifications , of the same technology across the

globe and one cannot but complain that the cost of

this railway project in Nigeria is on a very high

side.”he said