From Fred Itua, Abuja
Members of the Senate Public Accounts Committee, yesterday, grilled the Executive Director of Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Mrs. Stella Ojekwe-Onyejeli over a $27.9 million interest free loan granted the AFAM Fast Power project.
The Senators said AFAM 3 Fast project belonged to the Ministry of Power, while the beneficiary of the loan is General Electric (GE) that is building the 450mw project.
The panel was considering the management of the $350 million Stabilisation Fund out of $1 billion Euro bond secured by the Federal Government in 2014.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power, Frank Edozien, told the committee that the total cost of the project is N186 billion with the Federal Government expected to provide 15 per cent of the fund while GE will pay the balance.
When asked why the $27.9 million was released to AFAM at zero interest rate especially when the beneficiary was clearly General Electric, Ojekwe-Onyejeli said that NSIA acted under specific instruction from the Ministry of Finance.
She said, “NSIA was instructed to give the loan at zero interest rate. When we are instructed to provide a loan at zero interest rate we will do so. In this case we had a specific investment mandate which we followed.”
She added that the Stabilisation Fund was 100 per cent under the control of the Federal Ministry Finance.
According to her, the money was not given directly to GE but to the Ministry of Power “and the instruction we received from the Ministry of Finance was to release the loan to the Ministry of Power which we did.” Explaining why the investigation became necessary, chairman of the committee, Senator Mathew Urhoghide, said, “We see General Electric is a partner in this thing with government. So they are supposed to provide 85 per cent and Federal Government to provide 15 per cent. The Minister of Finance now instructed that they should pay $27.9 million for those turbines to General Electric and General Electric is supposed to be a partner in this business.