Ways & Means debt: Probe into expenditure of loans must be credible
Recently, the accumulation of Ways and Means debt incurred by the Federal Government began to generate controversies. Ways and Means is the money that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) lends to the Federal Government in the meantime to augment spending based on the time the revenue is generated.
The debt is just one fraction of the spread of debts on the government. Recently, servicing debt has become a subject of concern, as records begin to show that over 90 percent of the Country’s revenue now goes into debt servicing.
However, more pressing has been the subject of how the loans acquired have been spent. Recently, the Ways and Means loans came into view as the subject of repayment began to come into view.
The Federal Government, very recently, revealed it is working to audit a N23 trillion Ways and Means debt. Speaking to the development, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun had stated that ”We have to stem liquidity. The Central Bank has led the way in pointing out that the Ways and Means have to be tailed down and eliminated and that is what we agree with. We are going in that direction, there was an inherited amount of N22.7trn in backlogs. We are auditing it and it is like when I am ready to pay a loan from a bank and I ask for an audit before finding the agreed sum to pay.
“But apart from that, how do you get your ways and means down? We have to get revenues up and expenditure reduced as much as possible.”
In reaction to the backlog in repayment, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, had said that the apex bank will no longer give Ways and Means to the President until the previous loans are repaid. Olayemi had noted that it was one of the measures taken by the apex bank to curtail the economic downturn currently plaguing the country.
Trailing the controversies, the National Assembly has commenced a probe into over N30 trillion sum of Ways and Means debt acquired from the Central Bank. It is pertinent that such audit and probe be decisively and objectively driven. The problem of poor expenditure framework which permits leakages, even with borrowed funds, has left the country in a mire of embarrassing economic state, with debts which no concrete and tangible results can be shown for.
The era of ridiculous borrowings for spending to which no link of tangible results can be shown for, must be put to stop. The Federal Government must become prudent and decisive in its approach to borrowings with a strict framework to ensure expenditures are strategically tailored to make funds prudently utilised for the good of the greatest number.
The Country can no longer be subjected to a system of deficiencies with challenges that have exposed its fabrics to bleeding deformities.
The legislature and the concerned authorities of the executive must rise to the necessity to eliminate the porosity which has opened the floor for mismanagement in the Country. This necessity cannot be less emphasised given the overwhelming scourge of economic deformities the Country is currently enmeshed with.
