By Ahmed Idris
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has dismissed allegations that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was not following due process in the printing of money to support federal government programmes.
Speaking on Thursday at the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room Dialogue held in Abuja, Osinbajo said the claim was absurd in view of the reality on ground.
He said: “That is certainly false. I think it is very sad that that is being circulated. I think the whole idea that that the CBN is printing money to support government is completely absurd. And the contest on which it was accredited to the person I think it was completely misunderstood.
“If you look at our M1, M2, the amount of money being circulated is within appropriate limits. And inflation has continued to go down month by month. Honestly if there is money out there way beyond limit then we should expect that inflation will begin to go up. But that is not the case. Of course, there has been a firm up on government borrowing and that is significant and we have been very upfront about what we are doing.
“The DMO is required to publish the debt profile of government regularly and only three weeks ago the last debt profile was published. The government has largely funded its activities through the treasury bills.
“There is no law that said the CBN should not intervene in agriculture, I personally believe that intervention are important especially in areas that government has funds. But how much has CBN expended? So far on the Anchors borrowers Programme it has expended N52 billion and that is not a significant amount of money, the budget is about N7 trillion.”
Osinbajo said civil society organisations are not doing enough on the fight against corruption in the country that the present administration is pursuing vigorously.
“There is not enough outrage from civil society on the anti-corruption war, they are not speaking up… this is an existential problem for Nigeria.
“Over N15 billion unaccounted for and the campaign from CSOs remain silent. Even if we get the best of restructuring in place and not much been done in fighting corruption then, we wouldn’t have achieved anything,” he said.
He said the fight against corruption is not the responsibility of the government alone, stressing that it is also the business of stakeholders including civil society groups and the citizens.
