No fraud in disbursement of Paris Club refund- Gov. Yari

The Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, on Tuesday, dismissed allegations of fraud in the disbursement of the Paris Club loan refund to states.

The NGF chairman, who is the governor of Zamfara State, stated this while speaking with State House correspondents after a meeting with Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, adding that there was no issue in the way the fund was disbursed.

His words: “There is no issue with the refund. The e issue is with consultancy which I think the Minister of Finance made clear that the consultancy which we decided to domicile in the NGF account was asked to work together on who to be paid or who not to be paid.

“Some people wrote a petition that they have not been paid and mind you, we have not even started paying fully because we have to ascertain who worked for who.

“As I am talking to you now, we have a lot of litigations. Someone says he worked for so and so years for this state and that state. We are taking a decision on that. I will not make any comment on it yet.”

The NGF chairman said the Paris club loan refund had helped the economy tremendously, adding that some state governments deployed the fund to pay salaries during the last Christmas and New Year.

It would be recalled that the EFCC had launched investigations into how part of the fund was diverted to pay consultants.

Yari also said he briefed President Buhari on the developments over the 4.5 billion dollars credit line obtained from China to boost agricultural activities in Nigeria.

He disclosed that an agreement for the agricultural loans was signed with Chinese government during the State Visit of President Buhari to China in April 2016.

According to the governor, Nigeria has successfully negotiated for a 10 per cent as against the initial 25 per cent counterpart funding for the loan.

“They are giving us a credit line of $4.5 billion which will cover the (procurement of) machinery and infrastructure; that is rural earth dams, irrigation and interestingly this loan has a 20 years repayment term with 5 years moratorium.

“Initially we started negotiations to drop a counterpart funding of 25 per cent; but understanding the economy of Nigeria, we negotiated to give a counterpart funding of 10 per cent which we believe Nigeria can do and we are targeting the natural resources fund for the counterpart funding.

“We are now speaking with the Chinese group and the Nigerian governors and the technical committee that was set up by the minister and the ministry of agriculture and rural development.

“So, we have now come to a stage where the president needs to come in so that he can give us a leadership role and a kind of approval of a certain level so that we can forge ahead.

The governor expressed the hope that the machinery, when supplied, would transform the nation’s agricultural sector and diversify the economy.

According to Yari, President Buhari has given his commitment and also asked the state governments to engage the ministers of finance; budget and national planning and the Central Bank Nigeria to conclude the negotiation.

He said the Minister of Agriculture would make presentation on the loan to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) before forwarding it to the National Assembly for final approval.