STATEHOUSE PRESS RELEASE PRESIDENT TINUBU HAILS $800M IMA GAS FID AS NIGERIA UNLOCKS FIVE-DECADE-OLD GAS RESOURCE President Bola Ahmed Tinubu welcomes the $800 million Final Investment Decision (FID) on the Ima Gas Project, marking another major milestone in his administration’s drive to unlock Nigeria’s vast gas resources for investment, industrialisation, job creation and economic prosperity. Developed by Nigerian independent AMNI International in partnership with TotalEnergies, the Ima Gas Project is expected to produce about 300 million standard cubic feet of gas per day at peak. The Ima gas resource, located offshore in OMLs 112 and 117, was discovered in 1973 but remained undeveloped for more than five decades. Despite its significant reserves and potential as a source of feedgas for Nigeria LNG Limited, the resource remained underground and unable to contribute meaningfully to Nigeria’s economy. The FID, announced on September 23, has changed this. The Ima gas project marks the fourth major gas project to reach Final Investment Decision since President Tinubu assumed office, following the Iseni, Ubeta, and HI FIDs. These FIDs reflect the growing momentum of investment in Nigeria’s gas sector and the administration’s drive to convert the country’s vast gas resources into productive projects that create jobs, generate revenues and expand economic opportunity for Nigerians President Tinubu said: “For more than fifty years, the gas beneath Ima remained a resource with enormous potential, but potential alone does not create jobs, finance businesses or improve the lives of our people. Our responsibility has been to create the conditions that turn Nigeria’s natural resources into productive investments and economic opportunities” “The Final Investment Decision on Ima demonstrates what is possible when we provide investors with a competitive, predictable and enabling environment. We are determined to unlock more of Nigeria’s gas resources to power our industries, expand our exports, create jobs and build lasting prosperity for our people.” Since assuming office, President Tinubu has prioritised reforms to reverse years of underinvestment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. Although the Petroleum Industry Act of 2021 laid an important foundation, several undeveloped projects lacked the fiscal and commercial conditions needed to become viable. In 2024, President Tinubu issued a series of Presidential Directives developed by the team led by the Special Adviser to the President on Energy. These directives sought to improve fiscal competitiveness, shorten contracting timelines and reduce costs. Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Ms Olu Arowolo Verheijen, said, “The story of Ima is ultimately the story of what our reforms are designed to achieve. Nigeria has never lacked resources. The challenge has been creating the commercial and investment conditions required to move those resources from beneath the ground into projects that employ Nigerians, create opportunities for Nigerian businesses, generate revenues and support economic growth.” “A gas discovery made in 1973 can only contribute to prosperity when somebody invests the capital to develop it, banks finance it, contractors build it, Nigerians work on it, and the gas is ultimately put to productive use. That is the transition we are seeing today.” The project also demonstrates the growing depth of Nigerian participation across the energy value chain. AMNI International, a Nigerian-owned exploration and production company, holds a majority interest in the asset, illustrating the increasing capacity of indigenous companies to participate in and lead increasingly significant developments in Nigeria’s upstream sector. Nigerian financial institutions have arranged 77 per cent of the project’s financing, with around 60 per cent of the project workforce expected to come from host communities, including Bonny, Finima and Andoni in Rivers State.

APC CAMPAIGN COUNCIL PRESS STATEMENT PARIS ICC ARBITRATION COURT RULING: ATIKU ABUBAKAR UNFIT FOR NIGERIA'S PRESIDENCY Atiku Abubakar, the African Democratic Congress candidate, is unfit to be President of Nigeria because he has once again proven he will compromise Nigeria’s best interests for personal, fiduciary gain. Abubakar’s legendary corruption reverberated in Paris at the International Arbitration Tribunal under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Hearings in the arbitration filed by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Ltd (Sunrise) and Leno Adesanya over the stalled 3960mw Mambila Hydroelectric Power Project in Taraba State revealed that Abubakar and former power minister Olu Agunloye worked in cahoots to sign an illegal power contract with Sunrise. The backdoor signing of the contract in the dying days of then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term, when Atiku wielded enormous power, put Nigeria in a serious financial peril, despite President Obasanjo’s objection and reservations at the Federal Executive Council meeting.  Atiku’s greed, however, propelled him to disobey the council and President Obasanjo, months after Leno Adesanya, through an offshore account, China Castle Investment, wired $500,000 to the US Citibank account of his now-divorced wife, Jennifer Douglas. The money arrived in tranches, raising red flags at Citibank and in the United States. The wired money and other suspicious transfers totalling $40 million surfaced in a US Senate investigation into Atiku and other corrupt leaders.  In the US Senate report titled Keeping Foreign Corruption out of the United States: Four Case Histories, Jennifer said her husband sent the money. She said she was not familiar with the offshore company that wired the money. Atiku’s treasonable act, after the Nigerian government declined to go ahead with the illegal contract, led Sunrise and Leno Adesanya to make a claim against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, demanding $680 million as a settlement sum and interest in respect of another arbitration in which it is claiming over $2.7 billion in compensation and interest relating to disputes associated with the development of the Mambilla  Hydro Power project. As the ICC Paris Tribunal concluded: "There is a close connection in time between the moment the USD 500,000 payment was made to the wife of Vice-President Abubakar on 30 January 2003 and the alleged award of the BOT contract to Sunrise on 22 May 2003." Nigeria fought valiantly to dodge this huge liability, echoing a similar attempt by another rogue company, Process and Industrial Development (P&ID), to extract an $11 billion claim from our country for a phantom gas project in Akwa Ibom that the company did not spend a dime on. By collecting a $500,000 bribe from Leno Adesanya to approve a Build-Operate-Transfer contract to a company with no scintilla of experience in hydro power generation, Atiku has proven he is one of the enablers of local and international predatory and exploitative entities out to defraud our country. At the hearing in Paris, Atiku, to avoid embarrassment, chose to stay away to give evidence in support of Sunrise and Leno Adesanya’s specious claim that the $500,000 was a foreign exchange transaction. Although the Tribunal requested Atiku’s witness statement, Adesanya shielded Atiku and Jennifer Douglas by lying. In contrast, President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari went to Paris to defend Nigeria and help stave off a liability that our country can ill-afford to redeem in these lean times.

STATEHOUSE PRESS RELEASE PRESIDENT TINUBU MOVES DIGITAL FREE ZONES INITIATIVE TO IMPLEMENTATION, TARGETS MORE GLOBAL JOBS & INVESTMENT FOR NIGERIANS President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has moved Nigeria’s Digital Free Zones initiative to its next phase, as the Renewed Hope administration seeks to make it easier for Nigerian technology and service companies to raise global capital, employ Nigerians and build for international markets without moving their businesses and intellectual property abroad. The President said the initiative will also create opportunities for more young Nigerians to work for global companies from Nigeria and expand the domestic ecosystem of engineers, developers, designers, lawyers, accountants and other professionals who provide services to growing digital businesses. “Nigeria has the talent, enterprise and ambition to build companies that can compete anywhere in the world. Our responsibility as a government is to ensure that Nigerians do not have to leave Nigeria or rely on other jurisdictions to realise that potential,” President Tinubu said. He said the government wants more of the economic value created by Nigerian talent to remain in the country through jobs, investment, professional services, intellectual property and growing Nigerian businesses. President Tinubu has consequently directed the Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, in her capacity as Vice-Chairman and Implementation Coordinator of the Presidential Steering Committee on Digital Free Zones, to work with the Itana Innovation project and the Committee to develop the roadmap for the full launch of the initiative within 180 days. The President established and chairs the Presidential Steering Committee on Digital Free Zones as part of efforts to modernise Nigeria’s free zone framework, created more than three decades ago, for the requirements of the digital economy. “For too long, some of our most promising young entrepreneurs have felt compelled to establish their companies and intellectual property abroad to access global capital and markets. I do not accept that this must remain the case. “I want the next generation of African technology, finance and service companies to be built, headquartered and scaled to the world from Nigerian soil,” the President said. The initiative is already taking shape with Itana, Nigeria’s first Digital Free Zone, now licensed by the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) and providing a platform for global and pan-African digital and service businesses to establish and operate from Nigeria. The Africa Finance Corporation is backing the $500 million Itana Innovation project at Alaro City, Lagos. The project will combine an enabling policy environment with an innovation campus, access to capital and ecosystem services designed to help African startups build at scale and retain more of the value they create on the continent. President Tinubu said the administration’s ambition extends beyond developing technology parks. “We want African companies to be incorporated in Nigeria, financed here and governed from here, while serving markets across Africa and the world. “I want a young Nigerian in Kano, Enugu, Warri, Minna, Maiduguri or Ibadan to be able to work for a global company without leaving home, and I want our founders to raise capital globally while their companies and intellectual property remain in Nigeria. “When these businesses grow here, they employ Nigerians, use Nigerian professional services and retain more of the value they create in our economy,” he said. The Presidential Steering Committee will continue its work across regulation, taxation, banking, immigration, arbitration and digitisation of government processes within Nigeria’s free zones. President Tinubu said the initiative will also position Nigeria to take advantage of the rapid expansion of Africa’s digital economy and growth of digitally enabled trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area.