The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN has denied
approving the controversial NNPC contract, insisting that what was approved at
a time was the financing arrangement, reports ITRealms.
Speaking to correspondent in Bonny, Rivers State, Osinbajo,
SAN, explained specifically that the approvals he granted to the NNPC while he
was Acting President were for financing arrangements for the Joint Ventures
between the corporation and IOCs, and not approvals for contracts.
“These were financing loans. Of course, you know what the
Joint Ventures are, with the lOCs, like Chevron, that had to procure. In some
cases, NNPC and their Joint Venture partners have to secure loans and they need
authorisation to secure those loans while the President was away. The law
actually provides for those authorisations. So I did grant two of them and
those were presidential approvals, but they are specifically for financing
joint ventures and they are loans not contracts,” he said.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity,
Office of the Vice President, Mr. Laolu Akande, noted that earlier Thursday, he
had tweeted on the same matter thus:
“In response to media inquiries on the NNPC Joint Venture
financing arrangements, VP Osinbajo, as Acting President, approved the
recommendations after due diligence and adherence to established procedures.
This was, of course, necessary to deal with huge backlog of unpaid cash calls
which the Buhari administration inherited, and to incentivize much needed fresh
investments in the oil and gas sector,” he Akande asserted.
Uboshe Uboshe/GEE
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