Ways and Means: Senate blames CBN for frustrating efforts

By Patrick Wemambu

The Senate Ad-hoc Committee investigating Ways and Means facility granted to the federal government between 2015 to 2023 has taken a swipe at the Central Bank of Nigeria for frustrating its efforts to uncover how the loans were spent.

Speaking after receiving an interim report from its consultants at meeting on Tuesday, Chairman of the committee, Senator Isah Jibrin said the Central Bank of Nigeria has refused to make relevant documents available to the consultants to enable them complete their assignment.

Although the representative of the CBN, Mallam Hamisu Abdullahi, Director of Banking Services tried vehemently to say the apex bank provided all the documents requested, the chairman said the facts are different.

None of the documents was submitted, the Senate Committee contended, adding that they will not allow representatives of the apex bank to attend the next meeting because they had been coming for a long time with the same reason. The least person that will attend the next meeting should be a deputy governor of CBN, the Senate Committee ordered.

Speaking further, Senator Jibrin said “What you are telling us is not the truth. We have not received the documents. I don’t want to deceive the public here.”

The Kogi East senator said the aim of the assignment being entrusted to the committee by the Senate President was for them to come up with a report within the shortest possible time which was being frustrated by the CBN action.

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“The information we have here is not different from what we have heard all along. What we did was to hand over the documents to the consultants, and when the consultants made available to us this interim report, our intention was to hold onto the interim report on the final report.

“But we’ve been compelled to make available this interim report to the general public so that they know that we let them know where the problem is, and the problem is that the Central Bank of Nigeria has denied us consistently the documents that we need to complete this assignment. That is the truth,” the Committee chair revealed.

Frustrated that he was at the CBN sometime ago to meet with the deputy governor and after promises nothing came out of it, Jibrin lamented that even the clerk had been there several times without success. Nothing has come out of it. More over, the consultants themselves were said to have taken it upon themselves to go with CBN directly, yet no dice.

“So let the Nigerian public know that this assignment has been hindered by the Central Bank of Nigeria. They will deny those documents. After this, you must avail us, or avail the consultants, all the documents that they require to complete this assignment.

“The reason for this meeting is to let everybody know why we have not been able to finish this assignment. Because it looks as if we have compromised. And the answer is that we have not. It looks like we have compromised…

“That is not the case. This is a major assignment that God has for everybody. We want to know how these monies were utilized. Okay? We want to know how these monies were utilized,” the Committee Chair insisted.

“Preliminary reports show that there are major, major infractions, especially on the part of the Central Bank of Nigeria. We want to defend that. We need all the documents without exception. Whatever documents the consultants need to ensure that this job is completed efficiently and as soon as possible, you must provide.

“As it is, we don’t have a choice but to give them a time within which they must provide all the documents to the consultants.
You just have to make sure that the documents are sent to the consultants,” Jibrin directed.

He reiterated; “We provided a schedule showing summary of ways and means taking direct ways and means and indirect ways and means. That folder was sent to an email provided by this committee. There was an email provided, we sent, we replied that email three times. And we can resend that document as we speak here. So we have responded, we are not aware of any document requested that we have not provided.”

Responding the CBN promised; “If there is any document that is requested we have not provided, let us know. All the documents required are in that folder. So after the consultant reviews what is in that folder, if he needs additional documents, our expectation is that he should say one, two, three documents are not there to provide. We have provided it separately and we can provide that again.”