The House of Representatives has opened an investigation into the $460 million Chinese loan secured to finance the Abuja Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) project — a scheme once hailed as a major step toward strengthening security in the nation’s capital.
The decision followed a motion of urgent national importance by Hon. Amobi Ogah (LP, Abia) during Wednesday’s plenary.
Ogah recalled that the project began under former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to boost surveillance and assist law enforcement agencies across the Federal Capital Territory.
In 2010, then Minister of Finance, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, led a federal delegation to Beijing to sign an MoU with ZTE Communications of China, which won the contract.
The CCTV project was funded through a $460 million loan from the China-Exim Bank — part of a $600 million credit facility granted to Nigeria as a soft loan, repayable over 10 years after a 10-year grace period.
According to Ogah, the country continues to repay the loan even though the CCTV network has failed to deliver the intended security results.
“After all these years and payments, Abuja remains vulnerable to the same insecurity this project was meant to fix,” he told lawmakers.
Despite the huge investment, the cameras and monitoring systems are largely non-functional, leaving many Nigerians questioning whether the funds were mismanaged or the project abandoned halfway. How could such a massive project vanish into bureaucratic fog without accountability?
The House has directed its Committees on National Security and Intelligence, Finance, and Public Accounts to probe the loan process, contract implementation, and current status of the CCTV project.
The committees are expected to submit a detailed report to guide further legislative action.
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