Nigeria’s Minister of Information Lai Mohammed, has disclosed that cabinet has approved a contract for consultancy service for the construction of a gas pipeline at the cost of $92 million.
Mohammed said the council approved a memo by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, for a revised estimate total cost for the engineering, procurement and construction of the OB3 gas pipeline project.
“This is a project that has been awarded but there was a need for the cost of the redesigning to seek for council’s approval so that there will be enough funds to execute the project.
“The project is important because it has to do with the delivery of gas from the eastern part of the country to the power turbines and to improve our power supply. This contract is awarded to Nestor Limited and Olisa Limited and the total cost of the contract is $92 million and N766 million ($2 million),” he said.
The cabinet also approved three memos presented by the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun.
He said: “The memos sought for the ratification of the multi-lateral competent authority agreement on automatic exchange of financial account Information. The memo is on the transparency policy guidelines is going to assist in curbing tax evasion and improve the revenue collection of government.”
Endorsing other projects
According to Mohammed, the Finance Minister also presented a memo asking for the approval of ratification of the African 50th article association.
Mohammed explained: “This particular memo is unique in the sense that both the African 50th project finance and African 50th project development association are actually two windows which have been created by the African Development Bank (AfDB) to allow for bankable infrastructural projects to be financed by the subsidiaries of the AfDB.
“The memo will take care of certain projects which cannot be financed simply by the AfDB.
“Such projects to be financed by these two platforms and already Nigeria is one of the founding members of these two platforms and have invested heavily in them and with the ratification of this treaty, it has made it possible for Nigeria to take advantage of this,” he concluded.
