Following allegations by human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) that two former central Bank Governors illegally diverted $7 billion from the country’s reserves, the former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN and Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, had reiterated over the weekend that he was ready for a probe into his tenure at the helm of the Central bank.
Reacting to the allegations, the Emir said that contrary to the claim of Mr. Falana, the CBN doesn’t pay subsidy to marketers stressing that he is available to account for his stewardship at the apex bank.
He said: “The Central Bank does not pay and has never paid subsidy to marketers and the only circumstance this would happen is the Central Bank acting as banker to government and carrying out instructions to make payments from government accounts.
“There is absolutely no circumstance under which the CBN would have disbursed its own money for payment of subsidy or disbursed money on behalf of government without authorization.”
He said the CBN was in the “forefront of the effort to expose the corruption in the subsidy regime and put a stop to it.”
Sanusi, who described the allegation on bank bailouts as strange, said: “The money was not given to bank shareholders and management but was provided to ensure that ordinary Nigerians and other depositors who kept their money in banks did not lose their savings as a result of the mismanagement of these banks and bad loans.
“The money remains a loan to those banks and is to be repaid from a combination of sources over the years. These include sale of collateral backing non-performing loans held by AMCON, recovery of those loans, sale of share of the banks held by AMCON and a sinking fund into which all banks are to make annual contributions.
“This will continue no matter how long it takes until the banking industry repays all amounts due to AMCON and the bondholders are repaid.
“All of this is in line with the law setting up AMCON and the purpose of setting it up in the first place.
“The resolution of the Nigerian banking crisis and the AMCON model are actually being held up as an example of how to deal with severe and systemic banking crisis. Not a single depositor in any Nigerian bank lost a single kobo due precisely to these arrangements.”