Rotimi Amaechi speaks on the controversial Chinese Loan during an
interview on Politics Today on August 4, 2020.
The Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, has
reacted to the controversy trailing the Federal Government’s
planned securement of $500million loan from China.
The House of Representatives had raised an alarm over clauses in
Article 8 (1) of the Commercial Loan Agreement signed between
Nigeria and the Export-Import Bank of China.
In the said agreement, Nigeria stands to concede her sovereignty
to China should there be a default in the repayment of the
$400million for the Nigerian National Information and Communication
Technology Infrastructure Backbone phase 2 project signed in
2018.
READ ALSO: Falana Calls For Probe Of Conditions
In Nigeria’s $79bn Foreign Loans
The controversial clause in the agreement signed by the Federal
Ministry of Finance on behalf of Nigeria and Chinese bank on
September 5, 2018 provides:
“The borrower hereby irrevocably provides waives any immunity on
the grounds of sovereign or otherwise for itself or its property in
connection with any arbitration pursuit to Article 85 thereof with
the enforcement of any arbitral award pursuit thereto except
for t he military asset and diplomatic asset.”
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But Amaechi, who appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s
Politics Today on Tuesday, explained that he told the
National Assembly members not to probe the loan issue too much in
order not to scare the lender.
“The reason why I said that is because we have already applied
for $5.3billion to execute the rail from Ibadan to Kano. We are
about applying for about $3billion to execute the rail from Port
Harcourt to Maiduguri.
“Don’t forget the National Assembly approved that loan. It is
unconstitutional and impeachable if you take a loan without the
approval of the National Assembly. So the same National Assembly
that approved the loan is now questioning the same loan and the
terms of the loan having looked at it before.
“If I am the lender, I will be worried. If they get worried,
they will say ‘No, we will not approve the remaining loans you have
applied for,” he said.
Amaechi who described the loan as the cheapest so far, said the
Chinese loan is a concessionary loans at 2.8 percent interest.
He explained that before meeting China, the Federal Government
had already approached other countries who didn’t approve the
request on the ground that they didn’t have money.
Read more https://swordpress.com.ng/2020/08/05/china-loans-why-i-told-reps-not-to-probe-too-much-amaechi/