By The popular civic start up group that analyses budgets and public data into a more engaging format, BudgIT has challenged the Lagos State Government following the trending report by China Railway Construction Corporation, the company in charge of Lagos light rail project otherwise known as Lagos monorail, that calls to question the openness of the Lagos State budget.
According to the group, this is due to the discrepancy between the figure contained in the 2010 report delivered by China Railway Construction Corporation to its shareholders (USD$182m), as published on the company’s website, and the officially acclaimed figure by the Lagos State government, which puts the project cost at USD$1.2bn.
“The value of the Group’s new overseas contracts during the reporting period was 9.5568 billion Yuan, 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 1.256 billion Yuan),” the report reads.
The group expressed consciousness over the possible underlying factors that could be responsible for this humongous difference and expressed certainty ambiguities such as this would have ceased to occur had the state government yielded to the group’s demand as well and that of the people to put an end to its budget secrecy.
The civic start-up emphasized that 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.
Aside from the monorail, BudgIT reiterates concern about the same opacity that plaques toll gates operation and large constructions in Lagos. Same goes to what they referred to as ‘abject lack of transparency’ in the procurement process.
The group however charged the Lagos State government to toe the line of transparency and accountability to the people.
“To put to rest all doubts and concerns, BudgIT demands that the Lagos state government should break the silence and come out clean on this matter. What is the overall cost of the Monorail project? Why the discrepancy between the official figure and the contractor’s report? These are key questions that demand an immediate response from the state authority.” The group demands.
