House cttee recommends zero 2017 allocation to transport ministry

House of Representative Joint committee on transportation, has recommended zero allocation to Federal Ministry of Transportation in the 2017 budget citing poor budget implementation in the 2016 appropriation act.

The committee, which consists of the committees of Aviation, Maritime and that of the Land Transportation, were emphatic in condemning the ministry’s inability to put the award of 2016 contract and implementations by the ministry and the mode of payments to the contractors.

Part of the committee members’ views include the disjointed reports of the award of contract of the ongoing rail project around the country, which, it said, has left the original amount of $60 billion to the amount of $75 billion.

According to the committee, the ministry owe Nigerians lots of explanations on how the awards of the rail contract and expenditure came to be before 2017 appropriation.

Also, part of the committee’s augment is the confusing nature of the earlier contractual counterpart funding by EXIM bank, saying “earlier and in the past 15 months, Nigerians are awash of the fact that the country is to pay 15 percent of the counterpart funding but what we are seeing here now is over 87 percent of the counterpart funding.

“It is time Nigerians know about how the tax payers money is spent and it is also time we know the type of loans Nigerians are meant to enter.”

Explaining further on the reason for the rejection of the 2016 budget performances, chairman committee on land transportation, Hon. Pat Asadu, added that the committee would like to ascertain the reason for additional money for the Lagos Ibadan rail construction which has gotten to the amount of $75 billion instead of the initial $60 billion.

The committee members emphasized that the detailed budget scope would be presented to put in proper perspective, item by item according to the 2016 contractual award beginning from the day of the negotiation to the signing of MOU with the said construction company.

It however demands for the proper process of financial release of the budget accordingly to be able to ascertain a proper implementation of the contracts being awarded in the Ministry.

On the railway budget increment from $60 billion to $75billion, the minister, Chief Rotimi Amaechi explained that there has been an extension of the Lagos Calabar rail project to the sea port, having discovered that Nigeria does not have such extension to sea ports and would be better for the service of the ports.

He noted that part of the reason for the increase in the contract sum was because the contract was because it was initially tied at the rate of one dollar to N195 but also explained that with the extension of the contract, the value of naira failed to N305 to a dollar.