$500m Chinese loan already approved, probe unnecessary – Reps

The House of Representatives on Monday defended its decision to suspend activities of its standing and ad hoc committees, saying there was no hidden agenda.

It also faulted its Committee on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements for investigating the $500m loan facility Nigeria recently secured from China, saying it had already been approved by the National Assembly and captured in the 2020 Appropriation Act.

But before activities of the committees were suspended on Thursday, the Committee on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements had written the Ministry of Transportation,  demanding documents containing loan agreements with China from 2000 to date.

Among the facilities the committee is probing is  the  $500m loan secured from China-EXIM Bank to finance railway projects under the Ministry of Transportation.

The Peoples  Democratic Party had, on Saturday, asked the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, to step aside for allegedly frustrating investigations into executive corruption.

The party stated this in a statement titled, ‘PDP Berates Gbajabiamila For Frustrating Corruption Investigation in the House of Representatives … Asks Speaker to Step Aside,’ signed by its National Publicity Secretary,  Kola Ologbondiyan.

But the Majority Leader, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, who is also the leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress caucus in the House, in a statement on Monday, berated the PDP for faulting the decision of the House to stop committees from investigative hearings.

The statement was titled, ‘’You’re suffering from horrific political hallucinations –  Doguwa replies the PDP.’

Ado-Doguwa said, “It is at first repulsive for an opposition party, the PDP, that has seemingly lost the actual meaning and essence of opposition, to have brought in undue politics into a matter of national interest, especially at the time of prevailing health and economic challenges.