Orji was first appointed in October 2012 for an initial term of five years, renewable for another term of five years.

Under his leadership, the NSIA has made remarkable strides, and its assets now stand at over $2 billion, which is invested in Nigerian Infrastructure, Economic Stabilization and Future Generation Funds.

In line with Section 16(2) of the NSIA Act, the National Economic Council had in July, this year, endorsed the renewal of Orji’s appointment, given his performance in the first term.

Also, President Buhari has approved the nomination of Professor Isa Hayatu Chiroma as the Director General of the Nigerian Law School.

Prof. Chiroma will succeed Mr Olanrewaju Onadeko, who is due for retirement.

Chiroma is a Professor of Law, and currently the Deputy Director in charge of the Yola Campus of the Nigerian Law School. He hails from Adamawa State.

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Orji disclosed this in Abuja when the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, paid him a working visit.

“We are not allowed to pay dividends until after 5 years of consistent profitability.

“From next year, the federal, states and local government will be eligible for dividends from the contributions they made,’’ he said.

Orji said that NSIA was set up in 2012 as an agency, to build a saving base for the country, enhance development of the nation infrastructure and provide stabilization support in times of economic stress.

He said that the Federal Government owned 46 per cent contribution to the Fund while the states and local governments owned the balance of 54 per cent.

“The NSIA has three Funds – Stabilisation Fund which holds 20 per cent of the Agency’s asset – Future Generation Fund which holds 40 per cent of the asset and Infrastructure Fund which also holds 40 per cent of the asset.

“The stabilization fund and the future generation fund are mostly invested outside the country while the infrastructure fund is invested in Nigeria,’’ he said.

Orji said that with 31 staff strength – 26 core staff and 5 consultants – NSIA had increased to I.5 billion dollars under the management.

He disclosed that in 2016, the authority had a total comprehensive income of N149 billion, most of which were returns from investment.

Orji said that the investments of the Fund were well diversified.

Specifically, he said that the authorty’s Stabilisation Fund was to the tune of about 3OO million dollars from which the Federal Government could draw in times of urgent need.

Orji said that the strategy of the Infrastructure Fund was to attract investors in to the country.

“We have five areas of focus for Infrastructure Fund which are agriculture, health care, motor ways, power and commercial real estate.’’

On agriculture, the NSIA boss said the body had intervened in reviving moribund fertilizer blending companies across the country.

He said the authority was also in the process of reviving Commodity Exchange to attract people into farming.

Orji said that the NSIA was working with Lagos University Teaching Hospital to set up multi-speciality hospitals to treat cases of Cancer, Cadio and Renal diseases.

He said the hospitals would help to stop the billions of dollars being spent abroad on health by many Nigerians.

Orji said that the authority was also intervening in the construction of Lagos-Ibadan expressway as well as the Second Niger bridge.

The Minister commended the Authority for its intervention in the critical sector of the economy through the Infrastructure Fund.

He underscored the need for the NSIA to place priority attention on making public its activities to correct the erroneous impression that the Authority is only to access fund.

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Chairman of the committee, Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar who is also the Governor of Jigawa State made this statement when he visited the Indorama world-class fertilizer plant in the company of the President of the Fertilizer Producers & Suppliers Association of Nigeria (FEPSAN), Thomas Etuh and the Managing Director of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Uche Orji.

Alhaji Abubakar said he was impressed that Indorama has fully keyed into the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative whose goal is to help the Federal Government to achieve higher food production and food security in the country.

A statement issued by the head of Corporate Communications of Indorama-Nigeria, Dr Jossy Nkwocha, said that “In supporting the Federal Government’s Fertilizer Initiative, Indorama will this year supply 360,000 metric tons of Urea to Fertilizer blenders, who in turn will produce NPK fertilizers and supply at cheaper price to the farmers across the federation.”

According to him, Managing Director of Indorama-Nigeria operations, Manish Mundra, received the team and conducted them round the Ammonia, Urea and Utilities plants which have capacity for 1.5 million metric tons of Urea fertilizer per annum and the largest single-line Urea plant in the world.

“At the Bagging section of the plant, the Presidential team inspected the specially packaged granular Urea bags meant for delivery to the blenders.”

Mundra informed the team that the Ammonia section of the fertilizer plant is presently undergoing scheduled maintenance shutdown to optimize its ammonia production and reduce energy consumption, activities that will enhance Indorama’s participation in the Federal Government Fertilizer Initiative.”

“The shutdown of the Ammonia plant is part of Indorama’s excellent maintenance culture and innovation, and the plant will be re-started on 24th February,” Mundra assured.

Governor Abubakar said he was quite impressed with Indorama’s operations especially in helping the Federal Government to achieve its agricultural transformation agenda. “I must say that I am impressed that Indorama is supporting the Federal Government initiative. This is one of the initiatives to bring down the cost of food items in the country”, the Chairman said.

President of FEPSAN, Etuh, also commended Indorama for keying into the Federal Government Initiative and promised that members of the association, especially the blending plants will make the best use of the opportunity to facilitate greater crop harvest this year.

Indorama has supplied about 250,000 metric tons of granular Urea fertilizer to farmers nationwide since June 2016 when it commenced production. Through import substitution, the company has helped the Federal Government to save foreign exchange and also earn scarce forex through the export of its surplus production after meeting domestic demand.

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The Managing Director, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, Uche Orji, had last week claimed that the $1bn initial sovereign fund contributed by the government was intact and had generated N15.7bn profit last year.

But Oshiomhole, who spoke with State House correspondents after meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the State House on Thursday night, said the claim was false.

He said he had evidence to debunk the claim that the fund was invested in projects that were already funded from other sources.

He said, “I reported to the media that the Sovereign Wealth Fund people, in their report to us, which I have in black and white, showed clearly that they have only $300m left in the account.

“We have it in black and white and I can publish it if anybody wants to deny that because it was not submitted to me secretly. It was submitted at a plenary of the committee.

“And then we asked, because I knew that the fund was $1bn, what was done with $700m and they said they have made some investments.”

Continuing, he said, “We asked them what they invested in and they said the second Niger Bridge and partially in the Kaduna-Abuja rail. That is what they said and I was not alone there.

“We were about five governors and it was a full plenary. But we know that the Kaduna-Abuja rail was funded with Chinese loan, which even Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke about, when they said the loan from China was not used for Lagos, she said it was for the Kaduna-Abuja rail.

“You media need to develop your own library and have your record so that when people speak from both sides of their mouths, you can replay back. Because sometimes it hurts me when political leaders and technocrats say one thing in the morning and they change the language the following day.”

The governor said he was not the issue, stressing that he was only standing by the truth.

“Don’t make me the issue, I’m not. The only difference is that there is beauty in standing by the truth and ultimately, it will set you free,” he stated.

Oshiomhole also said that professional international auditors were engaged to ensure confidence, and value-for-money in the ongoing forensic audit of all Federal Government revenue generating agencies in the country.

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Reasons ranging from the actual cost of the bridge, non- issuance of the Certificate of Compliance, non-compensation of the host community and non- adherence to due process in the award of the contract were also responsible for the stoppage.

The Director-General of Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, ICRC, Aminu Diko disclosed this after a private meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Already, there is a raging controversy over the actual cost spent on the consultancy for the bridge, with the allegation by Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, that N140 billion was spent on the consultancy for the Second Niger Bridge.

The allegation which the Managing Director of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA, Uche Orji, has expressed shock over, stating that only $2.21 million (about N340 million, using the then exchange rate of N154/$1) was spent on the consultancy for that project.

Noting the importance of the road that linked the South East and South West, Diko, however, asked the people to be patient with the government.

“The Second Niger Bridge is one of the projects that we discussed with the President. We did say it is in the commission for regulatory oversight. We have been discussing the transaction with the Ministry of Works.

“But before it can be finalized, the commissioner has to give a Certificate of Compliance, but we have not even done that because we have seen a lot of issues that we are uncomfortable with. We are talking with the Ministry of Works for them to correct them.

“The communities around that area are clamouring that their lands have been taken and that they have not been compensated adequately. As a matter of fact, we got a letter from Onitsha Traditional Council complaining that they have not been adequately represented in this transaction.

“We are not saying that something has not been done properly, but we need to be convinced that these few problems are sorted properly.

“We will also talk about the actual cost of the bridge, eventually we have asked the ministry of works to review it and justify how much the project should cost. For the Second Niger Bridge, there will be a lot of studies that need to be done on the integrity of the bridge itself which will take time. It is not something we can see being completed in the next six months.

“I will like us to be patient about it. We know that it is a critical road. We also know how Nigerians suffer during festive holidays and we hear people sleep on that old bridge. The time has come for us to bring succour Nigerians.”

The DG said he was not in the know of the present status of the project, stating that “I have no idea about the status of the project. What I need to tell Nigerians is that PPPs take a long time to mature. There is a difference between the project which you have money in your pocket or in your account and you just bring it out and tell somebody to go and do it.

“But when it is PPP transaction, you first engage a number of people. You have bankers, lawyers, engineers. They all collaborate to form consultancy for that transaction,” he said.

According to the NSIA Managing Director, Uche Orji, the cost of consultancy for the Second Niger Bridge was less than one percent of the cost of the project which was way below global standards.

A document he made available to Vanguard, Wednesday, indicated that “the project was initially estimated to cost N108 billion excluding duties and VAT, (if duties and VAT are included, the project cost is N117.9billion). This was equivalent to $700 million at the then prevailing exchange rate of N154/$. The final project cost would naturally be affected by exchange rate fluctuations and other variables.

“Total consultancy services cost so far is less than one percent of the estimated project cost. Whilst there is no standardized benchmark for transaction costs, the European Investment Bank’s Economic and Financial Report No. 3 of 2005, indicates that, on the average, the level of transaction cost for the procurement phase of PPP projects is over 10 percent of the capital value of the relevant project in Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom,” Orji said.

The MD said that NSIA’s technical consultants on the project were instrumental in value engineering of the project and reducing the initial cost to the current level.

He said that NSIA had put in place a multi-stage approval process for all disbursements, under which all payments involving construction are made only after approval by a third-party engineering firm, which matches work completed against amounts due.

Orji said that the Federal government made a commitment of N30 billion out of which it had released N18.3billion so far of which N10.4billion had been disbursed on early construction works.

According to him, “the NSIA assembled a team of Nigerian and international advisers with proven capabilities and global experience in PPP infrastructure projects to ensure the project got first-class advisory services. These consultants were engaged through a rigorous and competitive procurement process.”

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Minister of the Environment Laurentia Mallam said work had stopped on the project because the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was not conducted before the ground breaking, raising suspicion and fears that the project which was flagged off with fanfare may be abandoned.

The Ndigbo United Assembly (NUA) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) Southeast zone at the weekend warned against any “foul play” on the project but the preferred bidders for the project – Julius Berger Nigeria – and the Nigeria Sovereign Wealth Investment Authority (NSIA) denied that work had been stalled.

Addressing reporters after its emergency meeting, the National President of NUA, Sir Peter Okala, said the construction of the bridge remained a bond between Jonathan and the Southeast and called on the ministries of Works and Environment to put their houses in order for uninterrupted construction of the bridge, adding that anything short of that would be unacceptable to Ndigbo and Nigeria in general.

“NUA had to convoke this emergency meeting after reading on the pages of newspapers that the Federal Government has stopped work on the construction of the Second Niger Bridge because of the failure of the Federal Government to comply with the requirements of the EIA law before embarking on the project.

“Ndigbo is taking a stand that the both ministries should go home and do everything within their reach to settle the problem, get the EIA law in place and make sure we don’t hear this type of discouraging comments from the Federal Government again because the construction of the bridge is a great bond between Ndigbo and President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and we wouldn’t want the Federal Government through agents or whosoever to push Ndigbo to the wall.”

Okechukwu insisted that “now that the second Niger Bridge has been suspended, we call for international competitive bidding and due process to govern the award of the contract.”

Okechukwu maintained that sooner or later, Ndigbo would discover to their dismay that voting further for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on sentiment and ancient stereo-types would lead us to nowhere.

However, in a statement on Sunday, the Managing Director, Nigeria Sovereign Wealth Investment Authority, Uche Orji, and his counterpart in Julius Berger, Wolfgang Goetsch, said the reports suggesting that work on the bridge had been suspended due to non-compliance of environmental laws represent inaccurate and misconstrued information.

“Contrary to recent reports, work on the Second River Niger Bridge Project continues to progress according to schedule, to ensure timely completion of the Bridge, which is set to be executed under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement for a concessional period of 25 years through the Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) model, “ the statement said.

It added that the nominated EPC contractor, Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, had commenced full mobilisation to site and timely execution of all scheduled activities is anticipated.”

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