Sanusi replies Falana, says he is ready for probe

A former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi says he is ready for his time as head of the bank to be probed, Premium Times reports.

It would be recalled that days back human rights lawyer, Femi Falana had called for the probe of Sanusi, who is now the Emir of Kano, and Professor Chukwuma Soludo, Sanusi’s predecessor.

According to Falana, both men had questions to answer as to how they issued out bail-out funds to ailing banks.

Sanusi who spoke on Saturday said he was ready to give account of his stewardship.

On the bail-out funds to ailing banks, he 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.”

Speaking on fuel subsidy, 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 at the “forefront of the effort to expose the corruption in the subsidy regime and put a stop to it.”

 

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