Janet Samuel, Abuja
The Senate Ad-hoc Committee investigating the disbursement and usage of the ways and means loan has uncovers 13 infraction in the process of obtaining N30 trillion loan during the past administration to the Federal Government and N1.1trillion Anchor Borrowers’ fund of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Isah Jibrin-Echocho, representing kogi East Senatorial District who made this known, while speaking with Newsman shortly after the meeting of the Committee with officials of CBN at the National Assembly in Abuja, said that the loans must be recovered in full.
The CBN team, which was led by the Deputy Governor, Corporate Services, Bala Bello, made their presentations on Ways and Means and Anchor Borrowers Scheme on behalf of the apex bank to the Committee.
Senator Isah-Echocho said the committee was able to extract useful information from the CBN, which will guide their next level of discussion.
He added that the committee had issues with approvals in areas where it was discovered that the former CBN Governor autonomously approved several transactions which is regarded as unlawful by the committee.
“We believe that every approval must be given by the Committee of Governors (COG) i.e. the governor and his deputies. That is the standard rule. Where the governor alone unilaterally gives approvals, that calls for questioning. I think they will provide answers for us very soon.”
He informed that the Anchor Borrowers amounting to N1.1 trillion has an impressive repayment rate of up to 70% performance and the rest 30% of N358 billion are loans given low income farmers with very high risk.
The Lawmaker revealed that the risk involved is that those low income farmers will not have what it takes to perform to expectation in terms of “equipment, technical know how to manage those farms effectively, noting that there will be risk of high loan defaulters amounted to N358 billion”.
According to him, the adhoc committee advised them to inform the commercial banks to go after the borrowers to recover the loan since it was processed through the commercial banks and the risk is on them also.
