An audio recording of Nigeria’s Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, allegedly admitting that President Muhammadu Buhari has always ordered the CBN to keep printing money since 2015 has emerge.
President Buhari vowed to revamp the Nigerian economy in his campaign promises, but has been criticised for worsening the economic situation over the past six years of his regime.
In an interview with journalists prior to the 2019 general election in which Mr Buhari was re-elected, Mr Amaechi also disclosed that they swore an oath never to publicly admit to Nigerians that the government was on a printing spree of the national currency.
“And most of you didn’t know at the time we took over, most Nigerians don’t even know because we have sworn to an oath not to tell anybody we were printing money,” Mr Amaechi said.
“Do you know when a country prints money? When it has no money at all,” he said. “We were just printing money to pay debt.”
Mr Amaechi’s comments further exposed the cover-up that has followed Mr Buhari’s widely condemned approach to the country’s economy, as millions of citizens continue to plunge into poverty. Nigeria has since emerged as the country with the highest number of poor people in the world. The country also has the poorest electricity supply and the second country with the most jobless people worldwide.
Earlier this year, renowned credit rating institution Fitch said the Nigerian central bank under Mr Buhari has been printing money at an alarming rate, warning that such tactics could engender additional economic woes for the country’s 200 million people.
It may be recalled that GoldenNewsNg had earlier reported that Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, had accused the federal government of printing N60 billion to support states’ allocations in March.
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When we got FAAC for March, the federal government printed additional N50-N60 billion to top-up for us to share,” he had said.
Reacting, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Budget Planning, Zainab Ahmed, had said the claim by the Edo governor is a lie.
She also described as sad a situation where a sitting Governor can make such an allegation.
She said: “The issue that was raised by the Edo State Governor for me is very, very sad. Because it is not a fact.”
But the Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele stated that the money was meant as loan from the apex bank.
“If you understand the concept of printing of money, it is about lending money. There is no need for all the controversy around money printing as if we are going into the factory to print naira and then distribute on the streets,” Emefiele had said.
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