TheCable

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has cleared the air over his approval of two loans for the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission (NNPC) during his time as acting president.

Speaking to reporters during the ground-breaking of the multi-billion naira Bonny-Bodo road project in Rivers state on Thursday, Osinbajo said he gave the approval as required by the law.

He also said the approvals were for financing arrangements for the joint ventures between the NNPC and international oil companies (IOCs), and not approvals for contracts.

“These (the approvals) were (for) financing loans. Of course, you know what the joint ventures are, with the lOCs, like Chevron, that had to procure,” he said.

“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.”

Osinbajo’s response came shortly after Laolu Akande, his spokesman, confirmed that his principal had approved recommendations (on the loans) “after due diligence and adherence to established procedures.”

Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, had accused Maikanti Baru, group managing director (GMD) of the NNPC, of awarding contracts worth $25 billion without due process.

In a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, Kachikwu listed some of the contracts as “crude term contracts valued at over $10 billion, DSDP contracts valued over $5 billion and AKK pipeline contract valued approximately $3bn.

But the NNPC dismissed the allegations as “baseless”, maintaining that it followed due process in awarding contracts.