Senate Digs It Out With Ameachi Over Corrupt Practices .

The senate on Tuesday spotted Some official misconducts of the Transport Minister, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi,which came under the scrutiny of the Senate, according to The Authority News paper.

The Upper House, which declared them untidy, directed its Joint Committee to investigate them.
Top on the committee’s mandate is the procedure the minister adopted in the con­cessioning of the Port Har­court-Maiduguri and Lagos-Kano Rail Lines to a United States (US) firm, General Electric (GE).

RT,Hon, Rotimi Amaechi, Transport Minister

The Senate action was prompted by a motion spon­sored by Senator Akpan Bassey (PDP-Akwa Ibom) which he ti­tled “Urgent Need to Investigate the Granting of Concession of Western Lagos-Kano) and East­ern (Port Harcourt-Maiduguri) Rail Lines to General Electric.”
Senator Bassey, who is the Chairman of the Senate Com­mittee on Gas, said that upon approval of the project by the National Privatisation Coun­cil in April 2015, during the last days of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure, the Bureau of Public Enter­prises (BPE) and the Nigerian Infrastructure Advisory Facili­ty developed a roadmap for the concessioning of the rail lines.
He said that the BPE had engaged the Global Infrastruc­ture Facility and the World Bank in discussions on how to access funds to manage the pro­ject before Amaechi came into office and unilaterally awarded it to GE.

The lawmaker asserted that the Nigerian Railway Corpora­tion (NRC) Act did not envis­age the concessioning of corpo­ration’s facilities and services until the recent amendment.
Bassey also accused Amae­chi of violating the Public En­terprises (Privatisation and Commercialisation) Act, 1999 by the singular action.

He told the Upper Chamber that the minister had in an in­terview with CNBC in June an­nounced Nigeria’s engagement with GE regarding the conces­sion of Western and Eastern rail lines – Lagos to Kano and Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, respec­tively – worth about $2 billion.
Amaechi had said in the in­terview: “GE is already in; we are trying to get the govern­ment agencies to allow us ne­gotiate with GE. The company is going to bring in over $2 bil­lion into the Nigerian railway sector in which they are going to revive the Lagos-Kano nar­row gauge and revive the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri narrow gauge by private investment.”

But Bassey expressed con­cern that it was the responsi­bility of the Steering Commit­tee and Technical Committee of the Nigerian Railway Corpo­ration inaugurated by the Vice President in August this year to negotiate with potential bidders for the concessioning of the rail lines. He queried why the Min­istry of Transport should sin­glehandedly engage GE in June this year.

Having enjoyed robust con­tributions from senators, the Senate mandated its Commit­tees on Privatisation, Finance, Land Transport, Anti-corrup­tion and Financial Crimes, Trade and Investment to in­vestigate the transaction and re­port their findings to the Up­per House.