The Lagos State House of Assembly has approved Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s request for the state to fully take ownership of Lekki Concession Company (LCC) Ltd, a privately owned company.
The House made the resolution to approve the governor’s request sequel to the presentation of the Committee on Finance report during plenary session in Lagos on Monday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the House had received the request from the Executive on June 21 “and was committed to the Committee on Finance to further look into it and report its findings to the House’’.
The committee’s Chairman, Mr Rotimi Olowo (Somolu I), in his presentation, said the state would become the subsisting shareholders of LCC with 75 per cent shareholding and the Office of Public Private Partnerships, shareholding of 25 per cent, respectively
The lawmaker added that this was sequel upon the buy-out of all the shareholding interest of the company by the state government.
Olowo further said the original $53.9 million loan obligation from a private sector facility had been resolved after series of engagement between Africa Development Bank (AFDB), the company and the state government.
He said: “The agreement was to convert the loan to a public sector facility with the benefit of a considerable reduction in interest charges of 1.02 per cent of $1.12 million biannual.
“This is against the 4.12 per cent of $2.746 million per bi-annual, therefore, giving a savings of $1.16 million bi-annual or $3.24milliom per annum.
“The House, therefore, granted the executive the approval to convert the AFDB loan to the public sector loan backed up by sovereign Federal Government guarantee on behalf of the state government.
“This also authorise the state government to issue a counter guarantee in favour of the Federal Government along with an Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO) to deduct from the state’s statutory allocation.”
Olowo noted that the servicing of the loan obligations would have a maturity till August 2034.
