Vanguard (Abuja) - Immediate Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, will soon be probed by the upper legislative body - the Senate, over a $500 million USD loan taken from  the Chinese bank for a rural telephone project despite his government’s claims of rapid privatization of the communication sector.

Amidst concern that Nigeria’s debt burden is increasing again despite the debt pay off agreement between Nigeria and the Paris Club of debtor nations two years ago, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Communications, Mr. Sylvester Anyanwu, said the senate was worried that the project was conceived at a time the Federal Government had already given license to telecommunication companies for the nationwide coverage of the country.

President Obasanjo according to reports available to the senate committee, had verbally granted approval for the contract of the 3rd phase to be processed within the tenure of his administration in order to ensure that all the local government areas (LGAs) in the country are covered, even though his government had given another approval for local GSM operators to do same.

The senate move is commendable, but there are strong doubts if they can carry out any conclusive probe of OBJ, knowing fully well that he [OBJ] “personally sponsored and installed” most of the PDP legislators in the upper and lower house.

With his daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, currently under probe by the EFCC, over a fraudulent contract involving an Austrian company to the tune of N3.5bn, OBJ appears to have fallen from grace to grass.

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