Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has clarified that the approvals he granted to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) were for financing arrangements for the Joint Ventures between the corporation and IOCs and not contracts.

What happened:

• Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu in a memo to President Muhammadu Buhari had said the NNPC boss, Maikanti Baru approved $25bn contracts without following due process.
• However, the NNPC said the Vice President approved some contracts while President Buhari was on medical leave.

What Osinbajo said:

Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in a statement Thursday night, quoted him as clarifying in Bonny Island where he flagged off the Bodo-Bonny Road, Rivers State.

He said he only granted loans and not contracts.

He quoted him as saying, “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.”

Azeez