“More unfortunately, while another dubious foolery goes on in the House of Representatives, Nigerians are being taxed to pay both the principal and interest of a $470 million loan secured for a project that began and ended as an intentional fraud”.
BY OLUSEGUN ADENIYI
Following the adoption of ‘a motion of urgent public importance’ moved by Hon Amobi Ogah, the House of Representatives resolved last week to investigate the ‘$460 million’ Chinese loan secured by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration to procure and install Closed-Circuit Televisions (ICCTV) cameras in strategic locations within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. This is the third time the House will ‘probe’ this project. That no report was previously issued, and they cannot even get the accurate contract figure is very telling about how they keep records in that place.
Perhaps I should refresh the memory of our Abuja lawmakers. In May 2016, the House established an ad hoc committee headed by Hon Ahmed Yerima to investigate the scandalous project. From what transpired during that exercise, the CCTV cameras were part of the National Public Security Communications System (NPSCS) contract awarded in 2010 to a Chinese company, ZTE Corporation, at a total cost of $470 million (not $460 million). The Chinese Exim Bank provided a $399.5million loan while the federal government paid the balance of 15 percent, amounting to $70.5 million in counter-part funding.
However, when committee members visited what was supposed to be the switch centre at the Nigeria Police Headquarters in Abuja, they were shocked to discover that out of the 1,000 cameras imported at the time, only 40 were said to be “online”. The remaining 960, according to police officers manning the centre, “are down”. Since the project was to generate data by using the code division multiple access (CDMA) technology, even the small amount of equipment brought in soon became obsolete. An angry Tony Nwulu, a member of the visiting House committee, said the project was “planned to fail from the beginning.” At plenary, another member, Hassan Saleh, alleged that ZTE Corporation installed substandard CCTV cameras and that they built into the contract a condition (either accepted or not seen by the officials who signed on behalf of Nigeria) that details should never be made public!
Meanwhile, the contract was awarded without the required Certificate of No Objection from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) which meant it bypassed due process. Then BPP Director General, Mr. Emeka Eze, confirmed that much to the House committee. But the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSat), which acted as consultant for the project, blamed its eventual abandonment on funding. A former NigComSat Director General, Mr Ahmed Rufai, who served as a member of the project management team, said the federal government failed to provide the required “operational funds” to run the system which he claimed was completed in 2012. “The situation with the project is like buying a new car and refusing to provide money to buy fuel”, Rufai told the lawmakers. “How will the car function?” Corroborating Rufai, the then Managing Director of ZTE Corporation, Mr Hao Fuqiang, said the project was shut down around 2013 due to “non-operational” fund. But he failed to respond to the allegation that N10.8 billion worth of import waivers were granted to ZTE Corporation by the federal government because of the same contract.
Despite all the public revelations, Nigerians never got to know the findings from the House probe. But in yet another exercise on 24 October 2019, the House Committee on Finance, then chaired by James Faleke, demanded further explanations on the Abuja CCTV camera project from the Ministry of Finance at a budget defence session. “Before this administration, we collected some loans and the one that strikes me the most is the 460 million dollars (again, a wrong figure) for CCTV installation in Abuja,” Faleke had told then Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed. In response, Ahmed (currently, the World Bank Group Executive Director representing Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa) said: “We are servicing the loan, but on the project, we will have to ask the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Authority because the project was deployed in the FCT. I have no information on the status of the CCTV.”
While the lawmakers did nothing with the damning revelation by Ahmed, it was enough for the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) to institute a court action, using the Freedom of Information Act. Like many of the numerous cases by SERAP, it went on for years. But a few days before the late President Muhammadu Buhari left office in May 2023, SERAP secured a landmark judgment. Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the federal government to publish the total amount of money paid to Chinese and local companies and contractors as well as the status of the Abuja CCTV project.
What happened after the judgment? Nothing! Even the House of Representatives whose probe prompted SERAP to seek judicial intervention was not interested in the matter. Now, the same House is setting up another probe either to entertain the pubic or engineer a shakedown. But whatever may be their motivation, the story of the Abuja CCTV project is the classic metaphor of Nigeria’s public sector. From the financiers to the equipment suppliers and installers, a $470 million project was designed in the full knowledge that it would fail. The project predictably failed, and public money is now being expended to fund many legislative investigations in a questionable rigmarole that goes on forever.
In Nyesom Wike, if you can excuse his political hubris, the FCT has a Minister who is delivering road infrastructure at an unprecedented pace. But security of lives and property, for which the CCTV cameras project was initiated 15 years ago, is now a serious challenge. More unfortunately, while another dubious foolery goes on in the House of Representatives, Nigerians are being taxed to pay both the principal and interest of a $470 million loan secured for a project that began and ended as an intentional fraud.
