FOI: Daily Times writes Amaechi, demands information on abandoned $356m rail contract scam
Citing the FOI Act, 2011, The Daily Times has written a letter to the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, demanding for information on the abandoned Kuru/Maiduguri Lot 3 rail project which was awarded in 2011.
In the letter delivered and acknowledged at the Minister’s office in Abuja on Thursday, the newspaper is seeking clarification on the total contract sum, level of work executed and the outstanding payment, as $365million was said to have been paid upfront to mobilise the contractor to site.
The said rail contract was awarded during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Indications have also emerged that the contract, which was designed to link Maidugur, Borno State in the North East to Calabar, Cross Rivers State in South South Nigeria, has been a subject of probe as $356million was allegedly paid to a non-existent company with little or no job done.
The Daily Times recalls that European investigators are now probing how a dormant firm secured $356milliom rail contract in Nigeria.
An online medium, The Will, further reports that the contract for the rehabilitation of Lot 3 of the Nigerian Railway Corporation’s Eastern line of Calabar to Maiduguri is being probed by European investigators, who see the development as one of the biggest money laundering cases and outright theft of public funds in Nigeria.
The online medium further disclosed that the Lot 3, being the Kuru to Maiduguri section of the railway project, was reportedly awarded to Lingo Nigeria, owned by an Nnewi-born Abuja hotelier, Mr. Linus Ukachukwu. The firm and its offshore partners, Strasky Husty and Partners, were allegedly paid $356million.
According to it, the contract, which has a cost implication of N23,720,359,033.79 came under the project description “Rehabilitation of the Railway Track Network-Eastern Line Contract 7 (km 803 to km 1443Kuru to Maiduguri) and the contractor was listed as “Messrs Lingo (Nigeria)Limited in association with Strasky Husty and Partners Limited of Czech Republic.”
It added that after brief mobilisation to the site, the equivalent of the contract sum, $356m was eventually paid in full, but the job was reportedly abandoned after the money was collected.
