Senate committee fingers OBJ in $.2b rail contract fraud

In what may appears to be a pay back time for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Senate Committee on the FCT, has fingered him in the Abuja rail contract fraud totaling $195,878,296.74.

According to findings by the committee, the former President allegedly awarded the contract in 2007 without engineering design or Memorandum of Understanding.

It was also disclosed that a former Minister of FCT and current governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, allegedly signed the $841.645,898 contract based on uncalculated estimate. The 60.67 contract was also allegedly inflated by $10m per km, with the length reduced to 45km without refund of the cost for the 15.67 km that was dropped off from the project.

The committee, chaired by Senator Dino Melaye, who visited the site of the project to carry out oversight functions, called for the refund of $195,878,296.74 being the amount for the 15.67km that was cut out, from the Chinese firm, which is handling the project.

It would be recalled that Senator Melaye had taken on Obasanjo, accusing him of introducing bribery and corruption into the National Assembly while he was in office, after the former President wrote a scathing letter to the National Assembly, accusing it of wasteful spending and lack of transparency.

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