Senate, on Wednesday, moved against Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over what it described as recklessness in the disbursement of intervention fund.
The decision to check mate Apex bank intervention fund came through a bill sponsored by Senator Rose Oko.
The bill titled: “A bill for an Act to Amend the Central Bank of Nigeria Act 2007 to Ensure Transparency and Accountability in the Operation of the Bank and Subject intervention Advances to the Approval of National Assembly.”
The Senate accused the apex bank of Acting against in contravention of the provision of the Constitution and the Fiscal Responsibility Act through extra-budgetary intervention to selected bodies, institutions and agencies.
Leading debate on the motion, Senator Oko said that lamented that there is no mechanism in place to monitor and tracking the CBN intervention funds.
She added lack of proper tracking of CBN intervention fund has made it difficult for the lawmakers to proper oversight the agency.
He explained that many countries across the globe intervene in their economy like that of CBN programme but with legislative approval.
Citing countries, Oko said Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda are subjecting their intervention fund for legislative approval.
Reeling out various intervention funds by CBN without National Assembly approval, Oko said ” the N620 billion bailout for five banks, namely Afribank Plc, intercontinental Bank Plc., Union Bank of Nigeria, oceanic Bank and Finbank Plc., various donations to tertiary institution running into several billions, the N300 billion bailout to states drawn from $2.1 billion NLNG’s taxes and dividends to pay salaries.
“N2.2 trillium said to have been set aside by the CBN to fund various sector of the economy like Commercial Agricultural credit Scheme (CAC) N200 billion, Power and Aviation intervention fund (PAIF) N300 billion, MSMEDF- N200 billion, real sector support facility (RSSF)-N300 billion, and Nigeria Electrical Market Stabilization facility (NEMSF) N213 billion totaling N1.223 trillion among others.
“The total capital budget for 2016 was N1.8 trillion. If N1.2 trillion was indeed disbursed or intended as intervention fund, then an amount almost size the capital budget was disbursed without appropriation and tracking to know effectiveness of the intervention in the economy.
“In addition, the CBN was quoted to have said that in 2015 it’s intervention rose to N899 billion compared to N668 billion in 2014.”
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