 Welcome back it's still the breakfast and plus TV Africa let's move to our first major conversation while governor of central bank of Nigeria according to Mayfee Lee has disclosed that the Nigerian national petroleum company Limited has not been remitting proceeds from crude oil sales to the nation's foreign exchange reserves as a domicile of the central bank speaking over the weekend at the 57th annual bankers lecture bankers community lecture sponsored by the Charter seat of bankers of Nigeria and Lagos the nation's chief banker said this has been happening for a while according to him prior to the inception of the administration of president Muhammad Buhari the oil firm was paying three billion dollars into the country's FX buffers but at the moment nothing is remitted now let's just do a bit of a background check on this in August August of 2022 the Niger national petroleum company Limited had said in response to a statement by the NNPC it remitted a total of 2.7 billion dollars into its account with the central bank of Nigeria from January to June this year total of that amount a document on NNPC remittances was released to show this now this contradicted the claims the previous claims by the CBN at the time that the weakening value of Nigeria's currency the Naira was caused by the non-remittance of funds into Nigerians foreign reserve or reserves by the NNPC the document stated that out of the 2.7 billion dollars the oil firm remitted into its CBN accounts in the period earlier stated 645 million was for dividend paid by the Nigerian liquefied natural gas company it also added that 1.7 billion dollars was from the operational activities of the national oil company which recently transitioned into a limited liability company now in its reaction to the crash and the value of the Naira at the time against the US dollar the CBN had months ago said non-remittance of dollars by the NNPC was what precipitated the forex crisis and now the CBN governors come back you know to say this again but the report was released at the time the forex question in Nigeria fact sheet was what they titled it where the apex bank reportedly stated that there had been a zero dollar remittance to the country's foreign reserves by the NNPC you would like to accomplish that and bring it at this point a guest who will do a justice to this particular topic and of course give us his um his take or to help us unravel the entire situation or nobody show me is an old expert he jumps as a va zoom from Abuja Mr. show me good morning to you and thank you very much for your time good morning sir thank you it's a pleasure to be with you once again this this theory by the central bank of Nigeria is not new this for the second time it may feel a stating this zero remittance by NNPC but before now you know in august they had come out to respond to the NNPC by saying see we uh to the CBN by saying see we have been sending money to our account with you for the past six months totaling 2.7 billion dollars this is a breakdown whose report do we believe well i think first of all we are talking about issues of law here so we are there to be a case of non-remittance we are not just talking about issues of opinion or issues of discretion we are talking about criminal issues we are here to be that start to treat monies that are all the nation when all remitted to the CBN it is incumbent upon the CBN to take steps where those who are responsible should be liable so if this were the case even the CBN themselves can be accused of criminal negligence because it's like the FRS not being able to actually take or get remittances tax remittances to it which are actually monies for the Commonwealth so what they are doing on the or what they are doing in public trading blames is actually dancing naked by the time you get some happy NGO who is trigger happy they can bring both parties to the fore to the extent that their books are to be on record the second part of it is that this is also a challenge to the national assembly who have the power of oversight the CBN governor i don't know why and why it does some of these things but these are areas where he has powers where he has responsibilities to the nation apart from the monetary and fiscal policies you cannot be in charge of the finances of the nation and be telling the nation when there is a chaos that certain people who are supposed statutory contributions are not making them and it has been happening for a while so why is he there John of course will now come to who is actually telling the truth and in the absence of those banks we are not able to actually say who is that is that the CBN governor is not even being responsible by the contributions to the common world has not been has not is not happening and and where they say where the nmpc to also well it would be nice for for the law to take its own effect that i mean that okay so um how then do we explain the fact that you know um there's no remittance but there seem to be deduction from the federation account well you just have to look at the records i think under the freedom of info media can be allowed to view public documents so you may have to go to the courts on that this is actually for the record i mean it is not it's it's not anything that's it's in secret because uh uh it's also claimed that the claim yes that uh what do you mean the what we will verify is the account account because when the sales are done they are done internationally they are JP Morgan and into the CBN account so it is the JP Morgan account an account that will speak to it any claim come we seem to be having not a smooth connection with you right there with the audio because you you seem to be breaking let's hope that we're able to re-establish connection with you so we can have a seamless you know communication right here but but the question that's been put out is how what exactly are we dealing with is it the issue of um you know that we're not producing we're not you know there's no production what exactly are we dealing with because on the other hand there's something reports that are public whether or not we're able to go to the account and verify and say hey this is how much we have but um if there's no remittance there seem to be deduction in from the account so what are we really dealing with right here why are we not remittant we'll be the next question that we'll ask and um on the other hand what becomes yes we can hear you but we hope that we have a smooth connection with you so so i'm asking what exactly are we dealing with so my point is this unless you have evidence mere conjecture so it doesn't matter the fact that it is that um there are no remittances it means only evidence that can give guarantee when people speak in and they have no obligation to say the absolute truth that there is a consequence for not saying rest is the truth and not the politics of it and and to spark and to fight excuse me we're having some audio issues with you maybe you have to join uh you know exit and join the zoom you know a meeting but so we can hear you better it's not a meeting but i'm sure you know what i mean uh uh we apologize for that please just showing back so of course uh i mean the central bank of nigeria like we said earlier it's not the first time they are you know highlighting this or they are saying this they did they said something similar some months ago i think in august the nmpc had to react you know had to react to say hey uh it's not true and at the time when um you know some of the newspapers and media houses go back to the cb and say oh okay nmpc has said you're saying you're not being honest and that they actually have been repeating funds to the account the cbn at the time uh declined comments in fact i'll go to the punch in this report which says the cbn this is in august mercy that the central bank of nigeria refused to speak on the matter when contacted i mean i i wonder why that will be uh uh it's spokesperson quote this is what the punch said in august it's spokesperson osita ni sobi uh did not answer repeated calls to his mobile phone he'd not been to an sms and a whatsapp message sent to him uh on the matter but i mean the question would be is they may feel it the governor central bank of nigeria would he just come out to say these things if it's not true you know these are two institutions national financial economic institutions that are i mean i looked at with a lot of suspicion mercy the nmpc has looked at with a lot of suspicion for decades you know dating back to the military era their their their activities um have defied all attempts to add scrutiny you know nobody is able to see what exactly they do we talk about transparency in the all industry gas industry the nmpc is not he said not to be transparent is perceived not to be a transparent organization what about the central bank of nigeria lots of questions raised and even in recent time with the uh activities of the the central bank of nigeria governor and his foreign to partisan politics um some some claims made by certain governors in the south southern part of the country you know both institutions are institutions that have a huge amount of mistrust you know from nigeria but uh i love what they show me do we have you back yes i believe so all right um what do you say about the i mean because what i'm making now is that you know both institutions it seems like a a schedule calling port black would you would you would you say that and black say no i'm not black yeah go yeah okay i i think as nigerians we should be interested in the facts and not uh trading blame or not the trading blames that they are doing or uh who is who has a better reputation that's not the issue somebody can have a bad reputation and in this particular case be the one that has done what is of the interest to nigeria and nigerians need to get to the stage where they are comfortable with the truth where there's integrity in the pursuit of issues so the issues here is this between the cbn and the nnpc nigeria is being defrauded of a commonwealth that is without doubt that is in there so the issue is who is responsible is it the cbn is it the nnpc and it is unfortunate that we are talking about issues of criminal liability here and people are coming to the public glare to trade blames on issues that is causing hardship to millions and millions and millions of nigerians so sure because of time because of time i'll quickly ask you can we simplify the walls of the naira down to cbn non-remittance let's just say it is true in the recent time they've made zero dollar remittances into the external reserves can we narrow down the the the walls of the naira just to that because i know in the time past the cbn through god in me feel he had blamed forex bureau operators they had blamed the boki forex they blame the black market operators on the streets of abuja so can we now say if this is the case then it is the fault of the cbn that the naira is declining against a dollar okay it's a case of simple demand and supply i'm not an economist but i mean i understand a bit of the economic principles it's a case of simple demand and supply if nigeria that's the government the cbn in this case does not have enough dollar and there is consistent demand on the dollar by the naira it is normal that to go up and the only way they have the dollar because 87 80 percent of our forex earnings come from petroleum if that were to be the case then that would logically explain it but the issue as even the cbn has said is that this has been happening for a while so since it has been happening for a while what did the cbn do about it so that is criminal negligence on their own part where they're covering up for people do they have friends who were connected with it you know those are questions ligerians need to legitimately ask all right it's not a lot but they show me thank thank you so much if you've said it all i think you hit the nail you know hit the nail right on the head with that one we have to move on now thank you so much it's a pleasure for me all right then we take a break and when we return we'll be looking at a second conversation right here please stay with us