By Melvin Onwubuke
The Senate has announced that, it will question some officials of the Nigeria Central Bank on how N30tn Ways and Means Loan was acquired and utilized, by the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari.
This was disclosed by the chairman of the senate ad-hoc committee, senator Isah Jibrin in an exclusive interview with a reporter on Thursday, according to The Punch.
Isah Jibrin, the chairman of the committee, said the panel had commenced preliminary investigations, based on some documents it obtained.
The Senate had on Tuesday appointed Jibrin as the chairman of the panel to investigate the N30tn Ways and Means loan given by the then CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to the Buhari administration.
He said “Because Ways and means cover very large latitude, so based on the information that I have now, I am going to write to seek clarifications on certain issues thereafter the committee will meet.
“I have some documents and I want to leverage on those documents by going through them to ask questions from the CBN to seek further clarifications. Thereafter, we will now invite CBN officials who were engaged under Emefiele, although he is no longer there.
“They were a part of it, they have to come and explain to us. The terms of reference are very simple.”
He continued “These monies were given out. We want to know the agencies that benefited from those monies.
“We also want to know the individual Nigerians who benefited. We want to know the terms and conditions. The CBN is not Father Christmas. They are loans; we want to know the beneficiaries of those loans.
“What are the terms and conditions of those loans? What are the collaterals collected to fall back on when there is a default? Have they been repaid? What are the repayment schedules? In case of default do we have collateral? So those are the issues, we are not witch-hunting anybody.”
Senator added “This country belongs to all of us, we want to know what actually transpired because we are where we are today because of those reckless exercises.
“I will call it reckless because when you are taking a decision as an economist because I want to believe, we have economists there when you take a particular decision, you should be able to ascertain the possible impact of that decision on the larger community.”
He explained further “You either withdraw or you modify, that is why I am happy that the Monetary Policy Committee has been composed. You know the composition of the MPC is crucial, because that is where policy measures are taken. You need to look at it, if this variable is this, and the state of the economy is XYZ, what do you do?
“How do you tinker with some of those variables so that the larger society will improve? That is why we want to unravel all that happened, not to witch-hunt anybody but to know the extent to which Ways and means advances have been performed and then other decisions can be taken thereafter.”
The ‘Ways and Means’ is an overdraft taken directly from the central bank to fund budget deficits or address national contingency needs. This usually requires approval of the executive arm of government and ratified by the parliament.
