Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Prominent Economist, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, yesterday revealed that an estimated sum of N30trillion had been pilfered under President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. Soludo, in a 6491-word (10-page) response to Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is the Minister of Finance and coordinating Minister of Economy, said the Nigerian economy was in for a very turbulent time this year because the economy had been grossly mishandled.
The Federal Government had last Wednesday said that the five-year tenure of Soludo as the Governor of the CBN between 2004 and 2009 was a disaster to the banking sector. Continue...
The comment came on the heels of an earlier article by Soludo last Monday in which he claimed that the Nigerian economy under Jonathan had performed woefully.
In a statement by Okonjo- Iweala last Wednesday, described Soludo’s as an “embittered loser in the Nigerian political space.” However Soludo, in his new article made available yesterday, said if the prices of crude oil in the international market failed to rebound, Nigeria was facing an unprecedented level of economic crisis with horrible attendant hardships for the citizenry. “Our public finance is hemorrhaging to the point that estimated over N30tn is missing or stolen or unaccounted for, or simply mismanaged,” the former Soludo said.
In Soludo’s response labeled, ‘Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala and the missing trillions’, he said the sharp slide in the nairadollar exchange rate from N158 a few months ago to N215 currently showed that trouble was already at the doorstep. Said Soludo: “Unless oil price recovers, this is just the beginning.” The former CBN Governor, who declared that “for the sake of Nigeria, I won’t keep quiet anymore!”, said his earlier article was written out of the concern that the 2015 elections campaign was being conducted in manner that did not show that the economy was in crisis.
He said, “Part of my frustration is that five years after, everything I warned about has come to happen and we are conducting our campaigns as if we are not in crisis.
As a concerned Nigerian, I have a duty to speak out again.” Giving details of the N30trillon stolen under Jonathan, Soludo said: “Under you as Minister of Finance and coordinator of the economy, the basket of our national treasury is leaking profusely from all sides.
Just a few illustrations! First, you admit that ‘oil theft’ has reduced oil output from the average 2.3 – 2.4 million barrels per day (mpd) to 1.95mpd (meaning that at least 350,000 to 450,000 barrels per day are being ‘stolen’. On the average of 400,000 per day and the oil prices over the past four years, it comes to about $60 billion ‘stolen’ in just four years. In today’s exchange rate, that is about N12.6trillion.
This is at a time of cessation of crisis in the Niger Delta and amnesty programme. Can you tell Nigerians how much the amnesty programme costs, and also the annual cost for ‘protecting’ the pipelines and security of oil wells? And the ‘thieves’ are spirits? “Second, my earlier article stated that the minimum forex reserves should have been at least $90 billion by now and you did not challenge it.
Rather it is about $30billion, meaning that gross mismanagement has denied the country some $60billion or another N12.6trillon. Now add the ‘missing’ $20billion from the NNPC. You promised a forensic audit report ‘soon’, and morethan a year later the report itself is still ‘missing”.
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