Ex-PDP BoT Chair denies involvement in N1trn railway contract fraud

dimeji akinloye

February 3, 2016 8:41 PM

He explained that the NRC's various sub-committees receive reports from the site engineers and in return give feedbacks to the Board.

Bello Haliru Mohammed

The former Board chairman of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC),

Bello, who is also a former acting chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), disclosed this on Tuesday, February 3, at an investigative hearing organised by the House of Representatives Adhoc Committee on failed Railway Contracts from 2010 to 2015.

He cited Section 22 of the Public Procurement Act which excludes the Board from award of contracts, noting that the NRC he chaired only carried out oversight functions by supervising the projects approved by FEC.

“That would have been against the law. I signed agreements not contracts, I cannot recall all the contracts I signed, I am 70 years old. The decision-making was in the hand of the Tenders Board,” Bello said.

Recalling, Bello said as the Board chairman between 2009 and 2011, a directive he gave that all the scraps in the NRC yards should be sold but said he did not know if his directive was carried out or not.

However, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said that plans are in top gear for the movement of petroleum products from the southern part of the country to the North by rail lines before the end of first quarter of 2016.

dimeji akinloye