Chinese loans: Reps probe panel push continued hearing to next week

The House of Representatives has put forward to next week, the investigative hearing on Nigeria’s external borrowings and commercial agreements with other countries, especially China.

At the resumed hearing on Tuesday, the Chairman of the House Committee on Treaties, Protocols, and Agreements, Nicholas Ossai, the committee needed to scrutinize the documents already presented to it, and seek explanations from the federal ministry of Justice on the loans and agreements.

The committee, therefore, resolved to adjourn till Tuesday next week.

Invited guests who included several ministers and top officials of the federal government were sited at the hearing room when the Committee Chairman, Ossai, came in to announce the adjournment to next week Tuesday, as the next date for the third hearing.

Expected at the hearing were the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola; Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Ali Pantami; Minister of Police Affairs, Muhammad Maigari; and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mohammed Bello.

Both Bello and Maigari had arrived at the venue before the adjournment by the committee chairman shortly after the opening prayers.

Monday’s meeting which featured the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amechi, almost ended in a stalemate but for the intervention of the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, who orderly for a short break to enable the parties resolve the issues.

Ossai and Amechi had engaged in altercations that almost marred the public hearing.