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Nigeria: Senate Queries N124bn Spent On Railway
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Daily Trust (Abuja)
25 June 2008
Posted to the web 25 June 2008
Abdul-Rahman Abubakar
The Senate ad-hoc committee probing spend-ing in the transportation sector since 1999 has queried over N124 billion recorded as expenditure on the ailing railway sector under President Olusegun Obasanjo.
In his presentation to the Senate panel yesterday, Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Robert Ejenevi said audited accounts of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) showed a total capital spending of N124.9 billion for the railways.
He said the railway sector got N37.5 billion as appropriation from 1999 to 2007 sector, received N86.29 billion as loans and N1.09 billion from the Ecological Fund.
But Mr. Ejenevi said the investment is yet to be uncovered fully adding, "We are still working because there are monies that are not in this record."
The Auditor-General concurred, "There are other monies that did not pass through the books of the NRC. There are payments made which the Managing Director of NRC is not aware of because contractors are paid on their behalf by the Ministry of Finance. We are still working to bring out some of the monies spent on the sector."
Mr. Ejenevi said his records were only based on audited accounts submitted to his office by the NRC as "our limitation is that we cannot audit accounts of government agencies. We have to rely on audited records of independent auditors sent to us which are not completely reliable."
Commenting, Chairman of the Senate panel, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri (PDP, Bayesla) said there is need to dig deep to ascertain the actual amount spent on railway rehabilitation because the records emanated from the independent auditors engaged by the NRC.
The Auditor-General said though the records show that only N549 billion was spent as capital in the land transport sub-sector, "from records available, we confirm that there were additional mandate of payment to the transport sector totaling N116 billion, which was not reflected in the mandate presented for the period under review."
Mr. Ejenevi revealed that former President Obasanjo gave anticipatory approval for loans of N35 billion from the three percent Natural Resources Development Fund of government for construction of some federal roads.
He said, "It could not be established whether the loan has been repaid to the fund. I have inquired if the money has been paid back but the information I got was that I have to send a written request which I will do later today."
In his clarification, Mr. Ejenevi said N5 billion was used for construction of the Lokoja-Abuja road, N15 billion for Kano-Maiduguri road and N15 billion for East-West road.
He also said officials of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) shared N251 million as loans to staff of the agency within a year and also gave N9 million to a staff of the agency, Mr. Lawrence Ojabo for the launch of his book.
Ejenevi said FERMA got N95.7 billion for roads maintenance since inception and had allowed one Mamman to withdraw N32 million from its Zenith Bank account on 16 and 19 of December 2007 without any form of record.
The Auditor-General also revealed that the ministry of works made payments for road contracts that have been abandoned by contractors at various level of contruction. He cited the example of a contractor who received 64 percent of the total contract sum after doing just 100 meters of a 13 kilometer road.
FERMA management was however not given the opportunity to respond to this presentation as the Managing Director, Mr. O.O Peters together with his aids was turned back for late submission of memoranda.
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Senator Lokpobiri said, "You were given two weeks to send your memoranda but you took almost two months and you submitted your presentation in 16 Ghana Must Go Bags on a Saturday, when the hearing starts Monday morning. You have to go and come back on Friday."
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