The ruling All Progressive Congress(APC) have asked opposition Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) to concentrate its energies in accounting for the way it expended a Chinese loan of $2billion and also explain the status of the moribund Abuja CCTV project for which $460 million was expended while the opposition party was in power.
This statement by Yekini Nabena,Deputy National Publicity secretary of the party was in response to a statement issued by the media office of former vice president Abubakar Atiku on the sovereign guarantee and sovereign immunity clause embedded in Nigerias loan agreement with China.
According to Nabena ,Atikus argument against the loan was at best “unresearched, unintelligent and pedestrian”.
According to him,the explanation by Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi has explained the guarantee/clause in the loan deals is standard irrespective of the the country granting the loan.
Said Nabena,”Perhaps, Atiku and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could redirect their energies to explaining to Nigerians the status of the failed $460 million Abuja Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) awarded in August 2010 by the immediate-past PDP administration.”
The APC publicity scribe also ask the opposition party to “explain the over $2billion China loan the PDP administration took between 2010 and 2013 alone; $16billion spent on power with no electricity; fuel subsidy rackets; counter-insurgency funds that were diverted and shared to political cronies among other shocking heists.”
He recalled further that, the failed CCTV installation project was initiated by late President Umaru Yar’Adua and awarded in August 2010 by former President, Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to help security agencies in the Federal Capital Territory check the growing insecurity.
He explained that since the agreement became signed, “Nigeria has been servicing this loan to China while Nigerians are yet to attest to the visibility of CCTV project and unable to explain the status of the video surveillance project. The matter is subject to a legislative probe.”
“In all of these we are starkly reminded that the PDP remains a corrupted and damaged product. Nigerians must continue to reject the party at all levels of government.
In the area of fiscal discipline, prudence, curbing leakages, are we currently getting it right? An emphatic yes! Every kobo expended on infrastructure counts. Verifiable evidence abound in the fast expanding national railway projects, airport remodelling among other critical infrastructure projects being undertaken by the President Muhammadu Buhari government.
The days of phoney contracts as institutionalised by successive PDP administrations are fast fading.”
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