I Never Said Boko Haram Will Attack VIPs - Prof Osinbajo

Vice President Osinbajo

Nigeria’s Vice President , Prof Yemi Osinbajo, has debunked the state­ment credited to him that Boko Haram in­surgents planned to plant bombs in the res­idence of VIPs in the country.


He made this clarifica­tion in Ibadan yesterday during a private visit. He said, “What was said is that the Boko Haram insurgents in the North East are using people called ‘Babambola’ (scavengers) to try and plant explosive devices here and there. I did not say that they would be planted in the houses of VIPs.”

Osinbajo enjoined the people to be more vigilant as not to fall prey to the insurgents. The vice presi­dent also urged the states that received bail-out of $2.1billion to utilise the fund for its purpose and ju­diciously. He noted that the 40 per cent drop in federal allocation to states caused by the crash in the price of crude oil was capable of paralysing state finances.

His words: “As you know, the Federal Govern­ment under President Mu­hammadu Buhari directed that three things should be done regarding the situa­tion of the states in Nigeria. We know that the states were unable to pay salaries of their workers for many months.

“The first stage was the sum of money that was shared from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas divi­dends and taxes, amount­ing to $2.1b. The second package is a loan which the states are allowed to ac­cess. The loans are conces­sionary in nature and any state that deserves it should have it.”

“The third stage is the conversion of loans owed to commercial banks by the states to bonds. It is fairly complicated but simply put: The states and Federal Government will work out how the loan will be repaid over an extended period of time. We are looking at 15 to 20 year period.”

“Some have described this as bailout but what Buhari has done is an ex­tremely creative and com­passionate way of giving relief to states as much as possible, given the finan­cial circumstances they found themselves,” Osin­bajo said.




The Sun