The House of Representatives on Thursday issued a 7-day ultimatum to the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to submit all relevant documents on all current Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) in the corporation.
Lead Chairman, joint House Committees on Public Assets and Special Duties, Hon Ademorin Kuye issued the ultimatum in Abuja during a public hearing on the need to investigate and assess the performance of PPP programmes and concession.
Kuye (APC-Lagos state) said that the ultimatum became necessary following the failure of the Corporation to submit the documents as earlier requested.
He said that all documents on all agreements related to each asset of PPP and programmes, concessions, and lease agreements with commencement dates should be submitted.
Hon. Kuye said that documents on evidence of remittances to the Special Concession Account, income profile from PPPs/Concession/Lease, and specific achievements recorded by the period under reference should be tendered.
The chairman asked the management to enter documents and evidence of advertisement of PPPs/concession/lease and expression of interests on the leases.
According to him, the committee is also interested in documents on the challenges, problems, and constraints of mandate implementation and recommendations for improvement
Hon. Kuye said that an affidavit attesting that the documents/information submitted are true should also be attached.
He said that the committee would like to see the budget performance of the corporation from 2021 to date.
According to him, the joint Committees need to see all the items budgeted for and the level of implementation on all projects in the forthcoming oversight.
He also requested a detailed report from the NRC on a trending video which showed yet-to-be-identified individuals carting away assets from one of the train stations in the country.
Hon. Kuye said that information available to the committee suggests that such criminal activities were allegedly carried out in Niger, Bauchi Nasarawa, and Lagos among other states of the country.
He said that the committee will do all that is required to ensure perpetrators and their accomplices are made to answer for their actions.
“Failure to submit these documents and reports on or before December 11, 2024, would force the committee to invoke its constitutional powers against the NRC,” he said.
While responding, the acting Managing Director of NRC, Mr. Benjamin Iloanusi apologised to the committee for not submitting all the required documents earlier.
He blamed the failure on miscommunication saying that they submitted documents in accordance with the earlier letter received.
Iloanusi, however, appealed for some time to enable the corporation to submit detailed documents as requested by the committee.
He also urged the committee to share the trending video to enable him to carry out an internal investigation with a view to the location of the station and the individuals involved.
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