The House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee
investigating failed rail contracts on Wednesday discovered 169 ghost companies
registered as contractors with the Nigeria Railway Corporation, NRC, for
projects valued at N1 trillion.
Chairman of the committee, Johnson Agbonnayinman,
(Ikpoba/Okha federal constituency), said efforts to reach them had so far
proven fruitless and none of the 169 companies invited by the committee had
shown up. He added that so far, only the China Civil Engineering Construction
Corporation, CCECC, had responded to the committee’s letter.
The committee also asked the NRC managing director,
Adeseyi Sijuwade, to make available the agency’s record of Internally Generated
Revenue, IGR, between 2010 and 2014, and what the funds were spent on. In
response, Sijuwade said the IGR was used to augment the agency’s overhead
budget.
The inquiry took a dramatic turn when the
committee asked the MD to explain why he requested the office of the
accountant-general to refund N2 billion from the corporation pension fund to
the corporation in 2014.
Sijuwade denied making such a request to either
the Accountant-General or Minister of Finance. “I never at any time made any
request to the AGF to return N2 billion pension fund to the corporation,” he
said.
Source: The Vanguard
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