Moses Uwagbale
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has warned that it was inappropriate for people to give colouration to printing of money as CBN merely assisted the states.
The word, printing he said was being used as if it’s some foreign word coming from the sky.
Emefiele said: “If you understand the concept of printing of money. The concept printing of money; it’s about lending money.
“That’s our job – to print. It’s about lending money and so there’s no need putting the controversy about printing of money as if we are going into the factory printing the naira and start distributing on the streets.
He was reacting to controversy sparked by Edo governor Godwin Obaseki who reported that CBN printed N60 billion to augment funds from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) distributed to states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in March.
He said since the state governments had resorted to indicting the federal government and by extension the CBN for assisting them.
He said the CBN assisted the states similarly with bailout loans to meet their financial obligations during the 2015/2016 fiscal crisis, they must repay the debts.
In July 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari had approved a N1.5 trillion intervention package to assist bankrupt states pay salaries.
Although Emefiele did not elaborate on states repaying the budget support facility, but said that the states would be made to start repaying the loan in May.
He justified the CBN’s interventions in the economy, noting that these are also some of the measures currently being adopted by developed countries to reflate their economies.
He stated that it would have been irresponsible of the CBN or any central bank to stand idle and refuse to support its government at this critical point in time.
“I think it’s important for me to put it this way – that in 2015/2016, the kind of situation we found ourselves now, which is even worse than 2015/2016, we did provide budget support facility to all the states of this country.
“That loan remains unpaid till now. And we are going to insist on the states paying back those monies since they’re accusing us of giving them loans.
“Most countries in the world today are confronted by not only health challenges coming from the COVID-19 pandemic, causing economic crisis and the rest of them.
“What I keep saying is that it’ll be irresponsible for the CBN or any central bank or any FED to stand idle and then refuse to support its government at this time.
“What is being done is being done in any clime. And at the last MPC meeting, I gave data on what is being done in developed economies to shore up their economy and take them out of recession.
“Nigeria is unfortunately in a very bad situation. I am not going to pretend about it, in the sense that we are facing problems about productivity output, which is GDP. Luckily we managed to come out by a hair’s breadth.”
