BudgIT Tasks Lagos Govt On 873.5% Discrepancy In Cost Of 9-Year Old Monorail Project

Nigeria’s frontline civic organization for institutional improvement to facilitate societal change, on Thursday challenged the Lagos State Government to come clean on the true cost of its monorail project, which has remained uncompleted for the 10th year.
This followed reports quoting China Railway Construction Corporation, the company in charge of Lagos light rail project, as telling its shareholders in the 2010 report that the value of the contract is USD$182m (as published on the company’s website), contrary to the officially acclaimed figure of USD$1.2bn project cost by the Lagos State government. This represents a difference of $1.072bn, or 837.5% in the value of the project which commenced under the Tunde Fashola administration (2009-2015).
“The value of the Group’s new overseas contracts during the reporting period was RMB9.5568 billion, which involved the following significant overseas projects: light rail project in Lagos, Nigeria (the value of the contracts for blue line and red line was RMB1.256 billion),” BudgIT quoted the report as noting.
For BudgIT however, “while being conscious of possible underlying factors that could be responsible for this humongous difference, we say with certitude that ambiguities of this like would have ceased to occur had the state government yielded to our demand and that of the people to put an end to its budget secrecy. Lagosians deserve to know, steadily and accordingly, full details of how state resources are being used without any hesitation on the part of the government.”
Besides the monorail, the organization in the statement by Adeniyi Soleye, Communications Lead, BudgIT reiterated its “concern about the same opacity that plaques toll gates operation and large constructions in Lagos. Same goes to the abject lack of transparency in the procurement process, an impenetrable system which has ring-fenced public funds around private interests.”
The statement urged the government of Lagos, the fifth largest economy in West Africa, to erase all doubts and concerns by coming out clean on the controversy and putting a figure to the overall cost of the Monorail project, while giving reasons for the discrepancy between the official figure and the contractor’s report.
These, it added, “are key questions that demand an immediate response from the state authority.”

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