CBN Governor, Emefiele

Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele has, in a veiled response, described as inappropriate the colouration given to the concept of printing of money by the apex bank by the Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki.

Emefiele spoke with journalists on the heels of the alarm raised by Obaseki that Nigeria was in a serious financial trouble following his claim that the Feceral Government printed N60 billion to argument allocation to the tiers of government by the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, for the month of March.

The CBN governor, who was apparently piqued by Obaseki’s insistence, even after Finance Minister, Mrs Zainab Ahmed had debunked the claim, said that the apex bank printed money with which they gave loans to state government to bail them out from their financial crisis, saying as a responsible Central Bank, it could not have watched the government’s collapse.

He said it was the responsibility of Central Banks or Feds globally to provide such interventions, adding that now that the CBN intervention was being inappropriately coloured, it was time the CBN insisted that state governments must pay back their loans.

Emefiele explained that the bank’s interventions were meant to address the grim economic outlook because “Nigeria is unfortunately in a very bad situation.

He added: “If you understand the concept of printing of money, it is about lending money”.

“That is our job. To print is about lending money. So, there is no need of putting all the controversy about printing of money as if we go into the factory, print the naira and start distributing on the streets.

“It’s very inappropriate for people to give colouration to printing of money as if it’s some foreign words coming from the sky”

“It is important for me to put it this way that in 2015/16, the kind of situation we found ourselves in, we did provide a budget support facility to all the states of this country.

“That loan is still unpaid up till now. We are going to insist on them paying back those monies since they’re accusing us of giving them loans”.

In July 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari approved $2.1billion as intervention package to help bankrupt states pay salaries and offset contractors obligations.

Government revenue had dropped at the time because of the fall in the price of oil.

Emefiele said “most countries in the world today are confronted not only by the challenges coming from the COVID-19 pandemic causing economic crisis and the rest of them.

“What I keep saying is that it will be irresponsible for the CBN or any other federal reserve to stand idle and refuse to support its government at this time and what we are doing here is being done in other  climes.

“At the last MPC meeting, I gave data on what is being done in other climes to shore up their economy and take them out of recession.

“I’m not going to pretend about it. We are facing a problem about productivity output which is GDP. Luckily, we managed to exit from recession, now we are looking at how to get our head above the water”.

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