Senator Adams Oshiomhole, representing Edo North Senatorial District, has said that the excessive printing of money by the Central Bank of Nigeria under the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari through the Ways and Means policy crippled the naira.
Oshiomhole made this statement on Saturday at a Progressive Governors Forum’s Meeting and Interactive Session in Benin City, Edo State.
He blamed the policy for the eventual collapse of the Nigerian currency against the US dollar.
“We are coming from a country that was almost like Zimbabwe or Idi Amin’s Uganda, where he asked the Central Bank Governor to ‘go and print more money for us to share to the people’. And the Governor said, if we print more money, Uganda currency will be like a sheet of paper,” he said.
According to the former Edo State Governor and President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, to understand the root cause of the present cost of living and the exchange rate regime, you must trace and locate it in terms of the excessive amount of banknotes through the so-called Ways and Means which the past government created.
He said Nigeria was borrowing every day the way fish drinks water, stressing that it has become President Bola Tinubu’s burden to pay back those loans to guarantee the sovereignty of Nigeria.
Recall that the Senate in 2024 inaugurated an ad hoc committee to investigate the Ways and Means and the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the apex bank.
DAILY POST reports that the Ways and Means provision allows the Federal Government to borrow from the CBN if it needs emergency finance to fund delayed government expected cash receipts of fiscal deficits.
