Rotimi Amaechi want The National Assembly to Approve the China loan of $22.5 Billion..., South East not to benefit from the loan

    

Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister of Transportation that Nigeria is not intending to cede its sovereignty to China. He said that the sovereign Guarantee clause in the loan agreement was to assure China that it can take over the asset constructed with the loan money if Nigeria defaults in repayment. 

Amaechi on a television interview said, “The terms contained in the agreement is not as if we are signing off the country’s sovereignty. What we do is that we give a sovereign guarantee, which is an immunity clause. The clause is that in case of the country defaults, China will come to collect the items agreed upon.”

The minister explained that infrastructures not financed by the loan will not be taken over by China. 

He said that the Federal Government is seeking the National Assembly’s approval for $22.5b loan from China for railway modernisation. The Federal Government loan will be used for $5.3b for construction of the Ibadan-Kano railway line, $3b for Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, $11.1b for Lagos-Calabar and $3.5b for Abuja to Itakpe. 

He noted that the interest rate on the loan is about 2.8 percent, for 20 years, and has seven-year moratorium, saying with such terms, Nigeria will be able to repay the loan within the specified time. 

He also revealed that the Federal Government has started paying back $36m out of the $500m loan borrowed by the Goodluck Jonathan administration for the construction of Abuja-Kaduna standard gauge railway. 

 Amaechi said: “If you frighten the Chinese that they won’t recoup the loan, they will pull back. They want us to show them evidence that we will pay back, and one of the evidences is that waive backs the immunity clause, so that they can take their asset. It is the immunity clause that is being debated.”

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has given the Federal Government 72 hour-ultimatum to pull away “from the toxic and enslaving loan agreement with China, which threatens our sovereignty.” This was revealed in  a statement signed by the National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA

It said failure to pull out of the agreement would prompt mobilisation of all CSOs in Nigeria to challenge this new form of economic colonialism foisted by China and signed by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in a competent court of law.