THE Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Yakubu Dogara, on Thursday, vowed that no Nigerian involved in the contracts scam that ran into billions of US dollars at the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), would be allowed to go unpunished.
Honourable Dogara stated this while declaring open the ongoing investigative hearing by an Ad-hoc Committee set up by the House to probe the Ministry of Transport and the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) over the award of contracts for the rehabilitation of rail tracks, maintenance of bridges and procurement/rehabilitation of coaches and locomotives.
According to him, “In line with the anti-corruption stance of the present APC government and the Legislative Agenda of the House, this Ad-hoc Committee must ensure that the billions of US dollars spent on the contracts for rehabilitation and maintenance of rail tracks, construction of standard gauges, bridges, procurement of locomotive wagons and coaches from 2010 - 2014, answers to the value for money expectations of Nigerians.”
“There must be no sacred cows and the Ad-Hoc Committee must not take prisoners by not only calling a spade a spade, but by also exposing corruption in the process and all those who have misappropriated or misapplied railway funds or assets,” he stated.
“In line with our commitment to support the present administration in the ongoing war against corruption, the Ad-Hoc Committee must not fail to utilise its powers under Section 89 (d) of the 1999 Constitution, should any person fail or refuse to respond to its summons,” he declared.
“In such cases, referral should be made to the House to cause a bench warrant to be issued against them so that such person(s) who are still in deep slumber may know that change has come to Nigeria,” he said.
“The constitution empowers us to compel the attendance of any person or authority in Nigeria no matter how highly placed, which is a very potent tool. I assure you this time around that no such person(s) will have a president to run to for a cover or protection from appearing before you to answer questions regarding allegations of corruption against him or her,” Dogara assured.
The speaker, however, stressed that the hearing was not in any way aimed at rubbishing or witch-hunting any individual, but only to assure Nigerians that their commonwealth was not squandered by those entrusted with its management.
“We must note, however, that this investigation is not a witch-hunt of any person. Indeed, we have no scores to settle with anybody. The only scores we have to settle is against corruption, inefficiency or waste in administration of funds belonging to Nigerians. We are only performing our sacred constitutional duties,” he pointed out.
Earlier, the chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee, Honourable Johnson Ehiozuwa Agbonayinma, representing Egor/Ikpoba Okha Federal Constituency of Edo State, had said, “the probe was not in anyway designed to rubbish any Nigerian, but primarily to let Nigerians know how their taxes are being spent.”
He stressed that “the contribution of transport to our Gross Domestic Products (GDP) has been on the downward trend due to poor state of our rails thereby resulting to an economic loss to the tune of N450billion annually.”
Earlier, three former chairmen of the Board of NRC, on Thursday, disowned all the various contracts worth over N1 trillion awarded during their tenures for the rehabilitation of the nation’s railway system.
The three former chairmen who denied their physical involvement in the award of the contracts before the Honourable E J Agbonaiyinma-led House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee are Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje and Senator Ladan Shuni.
The trio, however, advised the committee to beam its searchlight on the supervising Federal Ministry of Transports and the Managing Director, NRC, Engineer Adeseyi Sijuade for facts and figures relating to all the contracts being investigated.
They assured the committee of their readiness to cooperate with it in its determined efforts to unearth the alleged contracts scam in the overall interest of the country.
They all claimed that on assumption of duties, during their tenures, the MD of the NRC in his briefs to them stated that all the contracts had been awarded and were at various stages of completion, adding “the managing director even made it clear in his briefs that the procurement Act excluded the board from contract awards.”
This came just as the Transport Minister, Mr Rotimi Amaechi and the officials of the ministry failed to appear before the committee and without any representation.
The chairman of the committee, who frowned at the development, disclosed that the Permanent Secretary of the ministry even called him on phone and promised to be around for the proceeding of the committee.
Defending himself during his submission before the committee, Alhaji Baraje said “the NRC board under me never awarded any contract. The records are there. There was only board meeting and one emergency board meeting under my leadership. “When the MD told me that all the contracts had been awarded and that the board had no role in contract awards, I set various committees for oversight functions for the proper execution of the contracts.
“The former president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, sent me to the NRC to ensure and provide a functional rail system in the country, but I was rendered redundant and I have to resign as the Chairman of the Board. I was a toothless bulldog, I couldn’t cope. They appointed consultants attached to each contract awarded,” he stated.
“The various committees I set up for the supervision of the jobs performed very well. I was at the point of collecting their reports for study and as well interacting with the projects consultants when I resigned my appointment due to frustration,” he lamented.
Speaking in the same vain, Alhaji Tukur said that his board did not award any contract as the MD, in his brief, said all the contracts had been awarded and were being executed while several huge amounts of money had been paid out.
Tukur, who said that four board meetings and one emergency were held during his tenure, urged the committee to go through the minutes of all the meetings and would discover that nowhere was contract issues mentioned, promising to make the minutes of the board meetings under his chairmanship available to the committee on request.
In his own defence, Senator Ladan who washed his hands in the award of contracts during his brief tenure said “I am on oaths, we were not happy about the happenings in the NRC then, but we cannot help the situation.”
Senator Ladan disclosed that he was a member of the board, but only became the chairman when Dr Haliru Bello, the then chairman was appointed minister and that to the best of his knowledge no single contract was awarded.
He pointed out that all the needed clues and information to get to the root of contracts awarded, names of the companies, values, completion stages and the amounts already paid out to the contractors had been provided by the invited former chairmen of the NRC and urged the committee to rely on those information.
The trio provided all enquiries and questions put before them by the members of the committee relating to their tenures and promised to reappear before the committee if the need be.
Commending them, the Chairman of the Committee, Honourable Agbonaiyinma said that the committee was impressed by their presentations and promised that the committee would go through all their submissions to know the next line of action.

www.tribuneonlineng.com/n1-trillion-rail-contracts-scam-i-will-expose-looters-—dogara

NICE

Kai.so money dy Nigeria like,dis.thunder fire buhari

rozzyy:
Kai.so money dy Nigeria like,dis.thunder fire buhari

Are you daft?


Sorry, I didn't mean that.

I meant.

You are very Daft.


So is it Buhari or GEJ and his Co-horts that were in charge?

In case you did not hear ... GEJ begged Bamangar Tukur with Adamu Muazu but gave him a "Juicy" post of Chairman of the Governing Board of Nigerian Railway Corporation....We all thought it was not a juicy post...but hey...1 Trillion Naira contract scam.

GEJ must be arrested.

The ZOO_ologist must fall

so since the Board didn't award any contracts

who was awarding all the Billion Naira contracts we saw there?

are these guys afraid to invite Okonjo Iweala or what?

Ghen Ghen. Time for exposure. There is nothing hidden under the sun that shall not revealed.

Jonathan sef

some people will start insulting him calling him blood northerner because an attack on corruption is an attack on them as well as their tribe.they dont care if he is hausa yoruba or igbo as far as he is corrupt he is their own