By the time you are reading this, it will be Day 2 of President Muhammadu Buhari’s five-day visit to China. A major highlight of the visit is the signing of a $2 billion package to finance some critical infrastructure. Although still sketchy, the details, we are told, include a brand new railway from Lagos to Calabar and from Lagos – Kano, in addition to sundry projects ranging from agriculture, mining, electric power generation and road construction. Call it the fruits of the earlier visit in February of Buhari’s Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun to Beijing, the projects are expected to give practical effect to the change agenda.
We have certainly been there before. If anything, Nigerians must be wondering if there is some magic in China that makes it mandatory for successive Nigerian leaders to worship in the Far East country’s altar of “agreement”. Recall that in April 2005, President Olusegun Obasanjo was guest to Chinese President Hu Jintao. The 2005 visit, his third to the country, ended with signing of some cooperation documents. Both countries, we were told, had “agreed to establish a strategic partnership within the framework of South-South cooperation and to enhance political and economic cooperation”.
What followed in October 2006 was the signing of an $8.3-billion contract for the construction of a railway line from Lagos to Kano. At the signing, President Obasanjo gleefully announced to Nigerians that the “new standard gauge track, north-south line was only the first phase of a modernisation programme that would cover two major longitudinal lines”. The second, he said, would link Port Harcourt with Jos and “five latitudinal lines that would also link all the 36 state capitals in Nigeria”. Under that first phase, about 1 315km of standard rail line was to have been constructed –to be financed by the $2.5-billion loan facility granted by the Chinese government.
July 2013, it was the turn of President Goodluck Jonathan. In a visit that spanned four days, an accord to facilitate $1.1bn in low-interest loans for much-needed infrastructure was also signed. The loan, according to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Jonathan’s finance minister who also coordinated the economy at the time, was part of $3bn approved by China at interest rates of less than three percent.
The foregoing is to show Nigerians are no strangers to the Chinese. They are, to put it in local parlance, our customers. Just as they are also no strangers to railway modernisation that successive administrations have continued to sell as dummy – or the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) – a company that has proven in time, as the undertaker of the Nigerian railway system. Didn’t the same CCECC undertake the Sani Abacha-era modernisation that did little to improve the railway system?
And where are we today? Like the moribund power sector that continues to gulp billions and billions of taxpayers money with less and less electric power to distribute, the truth is that the billions of dollars sunk into the rail sector – a good chunk of which were borrowed funds – have neither transformed nor adequately serviced the Lugardian contraption bequeathed to us by the colonial authorities.
The Obasanjo modernisation project, despite the noise, practically achieved nothing. In fact, no sooner than the late President Umaru Yar’Adua assumed office than he ordered what was later described as “scoping” of the project – a euphemism for scaling down. At issue was the opaqueness of the contract. Specifically, the contract was said to have been inflated from the original $5.billion to $8.3billion; it also reportedly fell short of due process.
The Jonathan-era revitalisation of the Lagos-Jebba rail lines which reportedly cost the treasury over N12 billion was no different. Today, few Nigerians remember the incident of a coach careering off the tracks moments after commissioning. Same for the rehabilitation of the 2,119 kilometres Eastern rail lines which reportedly cost N67 billion; it turned out be one of Jonathan’s re-election projects.
Not even the flagship modernisation project, the Abuja-Kaduna fast train, funded with US$500 million dollars concessionary loan from China Exim Bank and SURE-P funds is without its fair share of controversy. The last time, the Project Manager of the constructing firm – the Chinese Civil Engineering and Construction Company, Etim Abak, told the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory that “former President Olusegun Obasanjo awarded the Abuja Rail Project in 2007 without an engineering design or a Memorandum of Understanding”. He alleged that the Minister of FCT and current governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, “signed the $841.645,898m contract based on an uncalculated estimate”. Nigerians also heard that the contract, which covered 60.67-kilometres, was inflated by $10million per km and that the length was later reduced to 45km without refund of the cost for the 15.67 km that was hived off from the project!
Today, Nigerians have stopped wondering where zillions of dollars contracted in their name under the guise modernisation went. As in all things public, it has simply gone with the wind.
So what do we expect this time? Not much difference I guess. First, the Nigerian officialdom, the scourge of many an otherwise well-conceived projects, is alive and well. Although the usual culprit is the nation’s number pathology, Corruption Incorporated, there is however more in the benign pathology of bad faith, bungling ineptitude and the benumbing incompetence that makes the Nigerian public service the circus that it has become.
Think of the controversies that have dogged Budget 2016 as only a symptom of a deeper, malignant affliction. It explains why the power sector is prostrate; why the highways have become hell-ways; it explains why our aeroplanes sometimes fall from the skies. It is called the Nigerian factor. Picture, at a time of grave emergency, something as ordinary as preparing a budget and its associated process of passage eventuating in virtual lockdown! And we are not talking of implementation time when the vultures would come swooning for their share of the N6 trillion pie!
As President Buhari gets down to sign the dotted lines of his $2 billion package, he would do well to remember that the battle is on two fronts: the Nigerian daemon and our Chinese friends.
Far from defeated, the Nigerians daemon is only in the waiting mode. In the circumstance, the battle is not even half won. In contending with them, he will surely have his hand full.
So also are our Chinese “friends”. The President will need to shine his eyes well well! In a world where rabid self-interest rules, there is no such thing as a friendly enemy; either a friend or a foe. As they say, half bread is better than none – only if the bread is not laced with poison! President Buhari would also do well to inform his Chinese hosts that dumping of fake and substandard goods is not only hurting our economy, it is killing Nigerians in record numbers. Of course, we need help, the type that would lift our material conditions as opposed to those that would enslave. Nigerians know what I am talking about!
Once again, Mr. President, you will do well to shine your eyes. Have a safe trip, sir!
NATION
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We really do not need these bogus projects that gulp billions of dollars. All we need for now is just power. China has not executed one single project to fruition over the past decade. Are we not paying interest on these loans?