President Bola Tinubu proudly announced that he has met Nigeria’s financial obligations for three consecutive months without using funds from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) or seeking assistance from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through its Ways and Means provisions.
President Tinubu confidently said this on Monday during his inaugural presidential media chat with a group of select senior journalists in Lagos.
“Push me to my brag mode, in the last three months, I’ve not taken a penny from NNPC before I meet my other obligations. To me, that is excellent,” a gleeful Tinubu told reporters on Monday during a chat at his Bourdillon residence in the highbrow Ikoyi area of Lagos State.
‘’The former Lagos governor said he has met Nigeria’s financial obligations “without falling back to the old order, without going into Ways and Means, I’ve met all obligations”.
When asked whether he was scoring himself, the President said, “Why not? Will you score me? I should grade myself if I do my homework right”.
In September 2024, Nigeria’s apex bank chief Olayemi Cardoso blamed his embattled predecessor Godwin Emefiele for harming the Nigerian economy through the excess printing of money and the pumping of liquidity into the system.
“In 2015, the money supply was about N19tn, and in 2023, it was N54tn. That’s a huge increase, a very huge increase. And then a substantial amount of that was through ways and means.
“So, essentially, the printing of money resulted in a huge amount of money chasing the same amount of goods or a relative amount of goods. I think that context is very important to have.”
Known as the Ways and Means, the apex bank offered short-term financing to the Federal Government to cover its budget shortfalls.
