Senate intensifying probe of ‘N30trn ways and means’ under Buhari, says Isah Jibrin

Following a report by TheCable that the probe of the reported N30 trillion ways and means under President Muhammadu Buhari was in limbo, Isah Jibrin, chair of the senate ad hoc committee, says investigation is still ongoing and being intensified.

On March 11, 2024, Senate President Godswill Akpabio inaugurated a 17-member ad hoc committee to probe the “N30 trillion ways and means” secured under Buhari and report in “six weeks”.

The deadline is now past by nine weeks and the panel is yet to submit its report.

Jibrin, who told TheCable on Monday that the probe was being widened, also insisted that the total amount of ways and means advances made by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Buhari administration is N30 trillion and not the figure quoted by TheCable.

TheCable had reported that the ways and means advances by the CBN to the Buhari administration stood at N7.5 trillion as of December 2022, per official documents.

This is significantly lower than the N30 trillion reported by the senate joint committee on banking, finance, national planning, agriculture and appropriation which led to the setting up of the probe panel.

Jibrin, senator representing Kogi east, said N30 trillion was arrived at on the basis of the documents provided to his committee by the apex bank.

Ways and means is a loan facility through which the CBN finances the federal government’s budget shortfalls.

The CBN law limits advances under ways and means to five percent of the previous year’s revenue, but this has been observed mostly in the breach over the years.

Speaking with TheCable, Jibrin said the report of the probe has not been submitted in plenary because his committee is still working to get details on what the advances was spent on and determine who the beneficiaries were.

“The breakdown is for N30 trillion not N7 trillion. This is what was presented to us by the CBN. You can quote me on that,” he said.

“We felt like we needed to get more details. We were told that all the records are domiciled with the auditor-general’s office – that is tenors and repayment schedules.

“In fact, we were told that Ondo and FCT benefited from the ways and means and that there is a repayment schedule. We have written to them (auditor-general), but they have not written back.

“We have not even invited the beneficiaries of these loans, we can’t invite them if we don’t know details.

“When you use the money to pay salaries, that money is gone.”

THE BREAKDOWN

Documents seen by TheCable put the total outstanding overdraft to the federal government in its “treasury subtreasury account” at the CBN at N22,719,703,774,306.90 as of December 19, 2022.

This was made up of N7,531,819,048,929.66 as ways and means, N13,725,408,432,557.50 as total costs of transactions on federal government securities in the capital market, and N4,618,829,652,047.41 as interest charges on the overdraft facility.

The documents said the biggest advance gotten by the Buhari administration was about N2 trillion, which was disbursed in 2020 during the COVID-19 outbreak when government revenues fell as a result of the lockdown.

Next to that was another N1.4 trillion advance given to the federal government by CBN in 2019 – the year Buhari was re-elected as president.

The Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), Azura Power West Africa and Accugas Limited were some of the biggest beneficiaries listed in the documents.