New Telegraph

N300bn Kano light rail project: Court fixes date for hearings

The Federal High Court sitting in Kano has fixed February 2, 2021, to hear a suit filed by the Centre for Awareness on Justice and Accountability (CAJA) against the Kano State government proposed N300 billion Chinese loan in the state.

The N300 billion foreign facility was projected by the state government to fund a metropolitan light rail project in Kano me tropolis. A statement made available by one of the plaintiffs said the court was to consider an application on notice seeking to prevent the government from obtaining the loan from China Exim Bank.

Also joined as respondents in the suit were the Senate President; the Kano State House of Assembly; Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Ministry of Finance, Office of the Debt Management, China EXIM Bank and the Embassy of China. Meanwhile, the court had granted the prayer of the plaintiff to serve the 7th and 8th respondents (China EXIM Bank and Embassy of China) by substitute means through the Embassy of China in Abuja.

The court had also ordered the respondents to be put on notice to show cause why the applicants’ prayers for an interim injunction seeking to stop Kano government from accessing the loan. The rail project had generated heated controversy between those against the government’s move to embark on the project; several of them believed it would either not yield positive results or make economic reality in Kano. Former Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, first criticised Governor Ganduje’s move to take a $1.8 billion Chinese loan to construct the light railduring Kaduna Economic Submit in 2017, where he (Sanusi) considered the project as economic liability.

The former CBN governor contended that the facility was not viable on a population whose means of livelihood were rather agrarian to repay the loan as against an industrial population which rail transport would rather enhance their productivity. Also top among the project’s critics was former presidential candidate and businessman, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, who declared that granting the loan for light rail would amount to government mortgaging the future. Tofa, who claimed that Kano did not need what he considered as a white elephant project, accused the government of dragging the conscience of the state into a questionable loan that was not transparent enough.

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