The Federal Government on Monday revealed that inconsistencies on the part of the concessionaire of the two narrow gauge rail lines in the country, General Electric (GE) are currently hampering the progress of the $2.2bn contract.
This is even as the government said it has left GE with its Transaction Advisers to sort things out on the project.
It would be recalled that mid last year, the Federal Government handed over the letter of award appointing GE as the concessionaire for two narrow gauge rail lines in the country, after the company’s emergence as the preferred bidder for concessions. GE was expected to have introduced 20 locomotives and about 200 coaches to move freight and passengers in the country before the close of 2017. However, two months into 2018, nothing seems to have been done.
Speaking to newsmen on Monday in Ibadan, Oyo State, the Hon. Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi explained that conversation between GE and the Federal Government is becoming a little bit more difficult.
According to Amaechi, “Politicians are not good negotiators, so we have allowed our experts to continue negotiations with GE.
“GE is not consistent as far as I am concerned, and I have issues with consistency. Whatever I tell you in the morning, let it be so in the afternoon.
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“I am not saying GE is not transparent. I am just saying that the conversation with them is becoming a bit more difficult, and requires expert negotiation. So we have left them to discuss with our Transaction Advisers.
“Whenever they finish with our Transaction Advisers, they should then come back to government. The reason why I was involved was that I was trying to speed up the process. But the more I speed up the process, the more I discover that discussions are not going the way that me, a non-professional, wants it to go.
“So let’s allow the Transaction Advisers who are Economist, Lawyers and Accountants to deal with the issue with GE.”
The concession was expected to see the U.S. multinational invest in excess of $2.2 billion in the two major narrow gauge rail lines that traverse several sections of the country.
One trunk of the narrow gauge rail line from Lagos to Kano will pass through several states like Ogun, Oyo, Kwara, Niger, Kaduna and Kano. Another trunk starts from Port Harcourt in River State through Abia, Enugu, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Bauchi, Gombe and Maiduguri in Borno.
and then