Yemi Osinbajo, Vice-President, has  on clarified his role in the raging controversy over contracts awarded by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, when President Muhammadu Buhari was away on medical vacation. He said the approval he granted were financing loans and not for contracts.
According to a statement by Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, to the Vice-President, Oshibajo made the clarification while answering reporters’ questions after the ground-breaking of the multi-billion naira Bonny-Bodo Road project, in Bonny, Rivers State.
Akande quoted Osinbajo as explaining 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,” Akande quoted the Vice-President as saying.