The Presidency on Sunday said there was no truth in the media reports that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation awarded contracts worth $25bn.The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, made the clarification in a statement made available to journalists, adding that the same amount was not missing from the corporation’s account.
Akande said no contracts were procured by the NNPC based on the leaked petition of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, to President Muhammadu Buhari, contrary to the impressions being created in the past few weeks.
He said a closer look at each of the said projects would show that they were not “procurement contracts.”
He said, “When you look diligently at the referenced projects/transactions one by one, you will see, as the NNPC has shown, that none of them was actually a procurement contract.
“Take the Crude Term Contract and the Direct Sale-Direct Purchase agreements, for instance, these are not procurement contracts involving the expenditure of public funds.
“Both transactions are simply a shortlist process, in which prospective off-takers of crude oil and suppliers of petroleum are selected under agreed terms, and in accordance with due process.
“It is therefore wrong and misleading to refer to them as though they are contracts involving the expenditure of the NNPC funds, or public funds of any sort.
“As you now know, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources himself has in fact clarified that he meant to focus on administrative and governance issues, not raising a red-flag about any fraud – because no fraud exists in this matter.”
Akande also said it was inaccurate to attach $10bn and $5bn value to both transactions, adding that doing so was an arbitrary act that could completely distort the understanding of the situation.