The House of Representatives has resolved to investigate the execution of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Galaxy Backbone Limited, a Nigerian government agency and the Chinese government for fibre infrastructure across the country.
Galaxy Backbone, an agency under the ministry of communications and digital economy signed an MOU with China’s Huawei Technology Limited in 2018 to provide fibre infrastructure under the National Information Communications Technology Infrastructure Backbone, (NICTIB) 1 and 2 Projects.
The House resolution followed the adoption of a motion moved by Benjamin Mzondu Benjamin (PDP-Benue) at plenary on Thursday.
Mzondu said following the MoU, Huawei Technology Limited was expected to design, manufacture and deploy a kit that controls data movement across all ministries, departments, and agencies in the country.
He said as part of the agreement, the relevant committee of the House and the National Assembly at large approved about $475 million credit facility for the various phases of the project(s) to be made available by China’s EXIM Bank.
The lawmaker noted that phase 1 of the project which spans 13 states across the southeast, south-south, north-central and southwest zones of the country has been completed and commissioned.
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Mzondu expressed concern that all through the execution and completion of phase 1 of the project funded by part of the credit facility, Galaxy Backbone and to a large extent, the ministry of communications have frustrated efforts to oversight progress of the project.
He said “we are concerned that Galaxy Backbone Limited had made claims that the completion of Phase 1 of the Project is expected to reap revenue to the tune of billions of naira for the Government.
“Whereas there has been no oversight to ascertain the level of the job done and verify claims of revenue generated by the agency, there is a current bid to access an additional $328 million (N126.7 billion) credit facility to develop the NICTIB phase II which covers 19 northern states.
“Cognizant of the need to ensure judicious use of the nation’s commonwealth while ensuring the government’s ICT policy is implemented according to every aspect of statutory provisions guiding the execution of the project,” he stated.
Adopting the motion, the House mandated the committee on ICT to investigate the status of implementation of phase 1 of the project, including a forensic audit on relevant transactions for the purpose of executing the NICTIB projects 1 and 2.
It urged Galaxy Backbone and the ministry of finance to immediately halt all certificates of completion and payments, respectively, in lieu of the project, pending the completion of the investigation by the committee.
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