- A possible Nigerian is running Globim – Say Foreign Journalists
By Odimegwu Onwumere
A monorail is a banister-platform transportation coordination based on a solo rail, which proceeds as its single support and its conduct way.
More sugarcoated answers have been given by Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State than questions are asked on the possibility of achieving the monorail project which his administration said it was going to build in Abia State. Widely reported last month, Orji had boasted that his administration has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Canadian company, Globim Corporation, for the construction of a monorail transportation system in the state.
According to information available on its policy online, Globim Corporation is a privately owned consortium of internationally-recognized and multi-disciplinary engineering organizations, experts and specialists in various fields of transportation and infrastructure. Internally, Globim has adequate personnel capabilities to implement any engineering project from start to finish. This includes design and construction, management of contractors and subcontractors, manufacturing and requisite supply needed to complete the project.
But in the outbreak that a monorail was going to be built in Abia State, I contacted my friend-colleagues in Canada and the USA in the journalism profession to help me investigate whether the Globim has a track record in the construction of Monorail, and the results of their investigation is rather more shocking than it could be believed. Their investigation reveals that Orji perhaps was out to reap money fraudulently from Abia State’s coffers.
One of their reports reads: “This is clearly a scam to get money out of Nigeria to Canada. Ask yourself why aren’t they using the world leader in rail systems at, http://www.bombardier.com/en/transportation/products-services/rail-vehicles/automated-monorailsor going to China or Japan for this? The Globim people have no track record of building anything (clue to this being suspect is that a possible Nigerian is running the company). Clearly as Governor you start as many projects as you can – scam off the development money (sometimes as much as 20% of the total – so in this case 50 million USD ) multiply by all the other projects that don’t get made, is it a good way to make money?
“According to Globim’s website, the first phase of the Onitsha Monorail is budgeted at US $503 million and will have the equivalent of 36.2 kilometers of single track. No word so far on who the supplier for the actual trains and infrastructure will be, or where it might be manufactured or what the local content might be.”
On the exterior, Governor Orji had promised that Abia State would provide the labour and security required for the success of the monorail project; in just the same way many projects awarded in Abia State require both questions and answers. For example, the Achara Ihechiowa-Amagwu road awarded to Worldwide Environmental Technologies LTD at the sum of over N380m was one of the many roads that were awarded, but later abandoned. And here is Orji promising to build a monorail system in Abia State.
— Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, and Media Consultant, writes from Rivers State. Email: apoet_25@yahoo.com
