Ben Ibakpa, the lawmaker representing Ethiope Federal Constituency, has alleged Nigerian officials of signing loan documents from China written in the Chinese language.
Nigeria has obtained 17 Chinese loans to fund different categories of capital projects in the last one and a half-decade, POLITICS NIGERIA reports.
Also, records from Nigeria’s Debt Management Office (DMO) revealed that the People’s Republic of China emerged Nigeria’s major creditor under the bilateral deals with $2.3 billion out of $3.3 billion. Recently, Mr Ibakpa asked the house of representatives to investigate the loans received from China since 2002.
However, the lawmaker, reiterated this on Thursday when he appeared on a Channels Television show.
Mr Ibakpa claimed that the National Assembly is not carried along when the country takes loans from China.
“Just told you that even the Bureau of Public procurement is not aware of this loan. These loans are collected from the Chinese through the China civil engineering Construction Corporation, which is CCECC.”
According to him, they bring the bill through the Executive order. “Nobody looks into the bill. Nobody says if these projects are overpriced, but from what we have seen from other countries, the Chinese loans are overpriced.”
“Some of these agreements actually signed they come in Chinese language. I am very sure that our people don’t even know it is really alone. We’ve taken 17 billion…the National Assembly is being kept in the dark. They don’t know what is happening.”
He said the present administration having campaigned with an anti-corruption mantra should do better in checking these loans as corruption is fueled by awarding of contracts.
While admitting that the National Assembly may not have done the right thing over the years, he added that whatever has been done in the past that it is not correct, needs to be corrected.
Speaking concerning the 2020 budget, Ibakpa said little is known about how the money is being spent.
“We are taking about over N2 trillion appropriated for debt servicing. We appropriate and we don’t know how this money is being spent. That is we need to look into what has been happening since 2002.”
