November 24, 2023 NewsOrient
By Kelechi Eke

The Governor of Anambra State, Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo, has condemned Central Bank of Nigeria’s monetary policy, carpeting the apex bank for Illegally printing money.

Soludo, who was a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said this on Thursday while commenting on policies of the CBN in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme.

He said: “We sat here in this country and saw the monetary authorities literally printing money, illegally I must say, because I superintended the development of drafting of the 2007 Bank Act.”

“And to prevent us from where we are today, that is why we had an explicit clause there that prevents Central Bank from lending recklessly to the Federal Government.

“That you can not grant to the Federal Government more than 5 per cent of the previous year’s actual revenue.”

But according to Soludo, in spite of the clear provision, the CBN failed to comply with the 2007 CBN Act.

Soludo, an economist, frowned at the decision to violate the Act. As he puts it: “We all sat here and saw how the CBN brazenly, illegally violated that law year after year and kept on printing money.”

He said: “When you continue to credit the account of government, one trillion, people shouted, two trillion,10 trillion, 15 trillion and 20 trillion and we kept going.”

Also on the current hardship in Nigeria, Governor Soludo said: “This economy inherited a dead economy. From a macroeconomic point of view, this government inherited a dead horse that was still standing and people didn’t know it was dead… We must realise where we are coming from.”

NewsOrient