Between August 2016 and November 2018, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) made a number of transfers totaling 6 million (more than N400 billion) to the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) under Major-General Babagana Monguno (ret.d).
This unusual action reveals the murky business practices of the CBN under former group managing director of Zenith Bank and recently suspended governor, Godwin Emefiele.
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BusinessDay reported that information collected from the CBN website revealed that the apex bank began making these transactions to the NSA in August 2016, or nearly a year into the tenure of the previous President Muhammadu Buhari.
CBN data back to 2004 shows that no such transfer was made in the years prior to that. But after the initial transfer, the procedure persisted each month until November 2018.
Since the CBN stopped publishing statistics about its operations in 2018, it is unclear if the odd payments continued. In November 2016, the single-largest transfer totaled $139 million.
$616 million is equal to N426 billion at the current currency rate in Nigeria, approximately one-third of the 2022 defence budget.
A source said, “Such outflows from the CBN to the office of the NSA raise a red flag and begs the question of what it was used for,” a former central bank official who did not want to be quoted said.
“Anything that must flow to security should be transparent and be in local currency. Even if we assume it was for the importation of ammunition, it should be in the public domain but this isn’t; so something is wrong,” the source said.
Another source said: “More than half a billion dollars cannot move from the CBN to the office of the NSA without the approval of the president who ironically detained (Sambo) Dasuki for misappropriation of funds.”
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