During his speech at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings (AAN) and AfriCaribbean Trade & Investment Forum in Nassau, The Bahamas, he expressed that a number of organizations, both domestic and international, made deliberate efforts to undermine the operation of the 650,000 barrels per day facility.
He emphasizing that there were doubts about the project’s success, he commended Afreximbank and Nigeria’s Access Bank for their support, highlighting that the project’s vision would not have materialized without them.
He said, “We borrowed the money based on our own balance sheet. I think we borrowed just over $5.5 billion. But we paid also a lot of interest as we went along, because the project was delayed because of lack of land, also the sand-filling took a long time. Almost five years or so we didn’t do anything.
“We actually started in 2018. We borrowed that much. We have actually, of course, paid interest and some principal, about $2.4 billion. We ‘ve done very well. We now have only about $2.7 billion left to be paid. So we’ve done very well for a project of that magnitude.”
Peoplesmind
