Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwumah Soludo
Ejiofor Alike with agency report

A former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwumah Soludo, has faulted the response of President Goodluck Jonathan to his claim that N30 trillion was missing from the Nigerian economy.
Soludo said in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday that the article entitled: “Jonathan Replies Soludo over missing N30 trillion,” which was extracted from the president’s interview with THISDAY Newspaper did not capture the points he raised, probably because the president was too busy with election campaigns that he did not read his article.
THISDAY had quoted President Jonathan as saying that “Soludo said under Ngozi’s watch they stole N30 trillion” but that since the sum of the federal budget over the last four years was less than N30 trillion, such an amount could not have been “stolen.”
Also referring to Soludo’s allegation, the President said “it is all political.”
Soludo noted that he had earlier stated that he would not make further comments on the issues until probably after the elections but that since the president has decided to join the fray, he was constrained to make a further brief clarification.
“For me, President Jonathan is a gentleman and a friend but I have a fundamental disagreement on his management of the economy. On the issues at stake, I believe that the pressures of office and the hectic electioneering have not allowed him time to read my articles or that his staff have not explained the contents to him hence he totally missed the point in his comments,” Soludo said.
The former CBN boss further stated that in his article entitled “Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Missing Trillions,” he had presented some rough calculations covering oil theft, money that ought to accrue to stock of foreign reserves, unbudgeted oil subsidy payments, customs duty waivers, leakages through the self-financing government parastatals, unremitted sums by the NNPC, among others.
According to him, he concluded section of the article by noting that: “I have a long list but let me wait for now.
“I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate, Madam, is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under your watchful eyes in the past four years,” he added.
Soludo said it was evident that the monies he referred to are “off-budget” are monies that did not make it to the budget.
“I find it funny that the government deliberately avoided the issues raised above but instead has sought to divert attention by focusing on the “federal budget”. Let me state for the record that I believe that the amount of resources that are either stolen from the economy or out-rightly mismanaged by government far exceeds the federal budget per annum.
“Ours is about a N100 trillion economy, and I will be shocked if the government pretends that it does not know that currently about 10 per cent of the GDP falls into a ‘black hole’ on annual basis,” he said.
“We have not added figures based on counterfactual analysis such as the cost to the aggregate economy of bad or misguided economic policy. For example, in today’s THISDAY Newspaper, a headline news reports that “Aliko Dangote, Africa’s Richest Man, Loses $7.8 Billion as Naira, Stocks Plunge” while reporting that “In dollar terms, the devaluation has knocked more than $40 billion off the value of Nigeria’s economy. Of course, most people predicted that OIL PRICES would soon fall but we were caught unprepared, and today, the parallel market exchange rate is N225 to the dollar,” Soludo explained.
Soludo noted that “thus, the kind of analysis in today’s THISDAY is just one little example of the kind of collateral damages–‘costs’ or ‘losses’– that mismanagement foists on the system.
“To repeat, my article did not focus on the federal budget: the mismanagement of the consumption budget and its unprecedented debt accumulation (with low value-for-money expenditures) are entirely different matters. What I found particularly disconcerting as a Nigerian from the comments I read is the fixation to validation from the World Bank.”
Soludo said he had read several editorial comments of Nigerian media, adding that they do not agree with the ‘impression’ of the World Bank official.
According to him, he had also read a similar comment by a high government official stating that World Bank officials and CNN had told them that government was doing well and therefore who else could question them.
“But neither the World Bank nor CNN conducts comprehensive independent surveys on the economy— they comment based on the data they are given— and their subjective “opinions” cannot substitute for hard facts. The World Bank is not a statistical agency. I can provide a long list of countries that World Bank reports praised as ‘star performers’ and they slumped into deep crisis almost immediately after. Check out the World Bank and IMF reports on the US and other countries’ economies shortly before the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis in fifty years (the Great Recession of 2008/09).
“Actually for many countries once they start getting such ‘praises’, then perceptive officials begin to worry. Nigeria is probably the only country where its government officials quote the World Bank while ignoring data from its own statistical agency,” Soludo explained.
“A serious concern is that while government relies on external validation (opinion) as ‘proof’ of its performance, it is selective in the process—accepting the positive ones and disparaging the negative ones. Our recent exchanges illustrate the point. In my first article (26th January): “Buhari Vs Jonathan: Beyond the Elections”, I argued that “the economy seems to be on auto pilot, with confusion as to who is in charge, and government largely as a constraint.
There are no big ideas, and it is difficult to see where economic policy is headed to. My thesis is that the Nigerian economy, if properly managed, should have been growing at an annual rate of about 12 per cent given the oil boom, and poverty and unemployment should have fallen dramatically over the last five years”. No one has credibly challenged the above, except what the Financial Times of London described as a “furious response by the Minister”. But, the influential Economist Magazine of London and New York Times agreed with us,” he said.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/soludo-jonathan-missed-the-point-on-missing-n30tn/202676/
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Soludo: Jonathan Missed the Point on Missing N30tn
25 Feb 2015
Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwumah Soludo
Ejiofor Alike with agency report

A former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwumah Soludo, has faulted the response of President Goodluck Jonathan to his claim that N30 trillion was missing from the Nigerian economy.
Soludo said in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday that the article entitled: “Jonathan Replies Soludo over missing N30 trillion,” which was extracted from the president’s interview with THISDAY Newspaper did not capture the points he raised, probably because the president was too busy with election campaigns that he did not read his article.
THISDAY had quoted President Jonathan as saying that “Soludo said under Ngozi’s watch they stole N30 trillion” but that since the sum of the federal budget over the last four years was less than N30 trillion, such an amount could not have been “stolen.”
Also referring to Soludo’s allegation, the President said “it is all political.”
Soludo noted that he had earlier stated that he would not make further comments on the issues until probably after the elections but that since the president has decided to join the fray, he was constrained to make a further brief clarification.
“For me, President Jonathan is a gentleman and a friend but I have a fundamental disagreement on his management of the economy. On the issues at stake, I believe that the pressures of office and the hectic electioneering have not allowed him time to read my articles or that his staff have not explained the contents to him hence he totally missed the point in his comments,” Soludo said.
The former CBN boss further stated that in his article entitled “Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Missing Trillions,” he had presented some rough calculations covering oil theft, money that ought to accrue to stock of foreign reserves, unbudgeted oil subsidy payments, customs duty waivers, leakages through the self-financing government parastatals, unremitted sums by the NNPC, among others.
According to him, he concluded section of the article by noting that: “I have a long list but let me wait for now.
“I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate, Madam, is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under your watchful eyes in the past four years,” he added.
Soludo said it was evident that the monies he referred to are “off-budget” are monies that did not make it to the budget.
“I find it funny that the government deliberately avoided the issues raised above but instead has sought to divert attention by focusing on the “federal budget”. Let me state for the record that I believe that the amount of resources that are either stolen from the economy or out-rightly mismanaged by government far exceeds the federal budget per annum.
“Ours is about a N100 trillion economy, and I will be shocked if the government pretends that it does not know that currently about 10 per cent of the GDP falls into a ‘black hole’ on annual basis,” he said.
“We have not added figures based on counterfactual analysis such as the cost to the aggregate economy of bad or misguided economic policy. For example, in today’s THISDAY Newspaper, a headline news reports that “Aliko Dangote, Africa’s Richest Man, Loses $7.8 Billion as Naira, Stocks Plunge” while reporting that “In dollar terms, the devaluation has knocked more than $40 billion off the value of Nigeria’s economy. Of course, most people predicted that OIL PRICES would soon fall but we were caught unprepared, and today, the parallel market exchange rate is N225 to the dollar,” Soludo explained.
Soludo noted that “thus, the kind of analysis in today’s THISDAY is just one little example of the kind of collateral damages–‘costs’ or ‘losses’– that mismanagement foists on the system.
“To repeat, my article did not focus on the federal budget: the mismanagement of the consumption budget and its unprecedented debt accumulation (with low value-for-money expenditures) are entirely different matters. What I found particularly disconcerting as a Nigerian from the comments I read is the fixation to validation from the World Bank.”
Soludo said he had read several editorial comments of Nigerian media, adding that they do not agree with the ‘impression’ of the World Bank official.
According to him, he had also read a similar comment by a high government official stating that World Bank officials and CNN had told them that government was doing well and therefore who else could question them.
“But neither the World Bank nor CNN conducts comprehensive independent surveys on the economy— they comment based on the data they are given— and their subjective “opinions” cannot substitute for hard facts. The World Bank is not a statistical agency. I can provide a long list of countries that World Bank reports praised as ‘star performers’ and they slumped into deep crisis almost immediately after. Check out the World Bank and IMF reports on the US and other countries’ economies shortly before the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis in fifty years (the Great Recession of 2008/09).
“Actually for many countries once they start getting such ‘praises’, then perceptive officials begin to worry. Nigeria is probably the only country where its government officials quote the World Bank while ignoring data from its own statistical agency,” Soludo explained.
“A serious concern is that while government relies on external validation (opinion) as ‘proof’ of its performance, it is selective in the process—accepting the positive ones and disparaging the negative ones. Our recent exchanges illustrate the point. In my first article (26th January): “Buhari Vs Jonathan: Beyond the Elections”, I argued that “the economy seems to be on auto pilot, with confusion as to who is in charge, and government largely as a constraint.
There are no big ideas, and it is difficult to see where economic policy is headed to. My thesis is that the Nigerian economy, if properly managed, should have been growing at an annual rate of about 12 per cent given the oil boom, and poverty and unemployment should have fallen dramatically over the last five years”. No one has credibly challenged the above, except what the Financial Times of London described as a “furious response by the Minister”. But, the influential Economist Magazine of London and New York Times agreed with us,” he said.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/soludo-jonathan-missed-the-point-on-missing-n30tn/202676/
Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwumah Soludo
Ejiofor Alike with agency report

A former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwumah Soludo, has faulted the response of President Goodluck Jonathan to his claim that N30 trillion was missing from the Nigerian economy.
Soludo said in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday that the article entitled: “Jonathan Replies Soludo over missing N30 trillion,” which was extracted from the president’s interview with THISDAY Newspaper did not capture the points he raised, probably because the president was too busy with election campaigns that he did not read his article.
THISDAY had quoted President Jonathan as saying that “Soludo said under Ngozi’s watch they stole N30 trillion” but that since the sum of the federal budget over the last four years was less than N30 trillion, such an amount could not have been “stolen.”
Also referring to Soludo’s allegation, the President said “it is all political.”
Soludo noted that he had earlier stated that he would not make further comments on the issues until probably after the elections but that since the president has decided to join the fray, he was constrained to make a further brief clarification.
“For me, President Jonathan is a gentleman and a friend but I have a fundamental disagreement on his management of the economy. On the issues at stake, I believe that the pressures of office and the hectic electioneering have not allowed him time to read my articles or that his staff have not explained the contents to him hence he totally missed the point in his comments,” Soludo said.
The former CBN boss further stated that in his article entitled “Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Missing Trillions,” he had presented some rough calculations covering oil theft, money that ought to accrue to stock of foreign reserves, unbudgeted oil subsidy payments, customs duty waivers, leakages through the self-financing government parastatals, unremitted sums by the NNPC, among others.
According to him, he concluded section of the article by noting that: “I have a long list but let me wait for now.
“I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate, Madam, is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under your watchful eyes in the past four years,” he added.
Soludo said it was evident that the monies he referred to are “off-budget” are monies that did not make it to the budget.
“I find it funny that the government deliberately avoided the issues raised above but instead has sought to divert attention by focusing on the “federal budget”. Let me state for the record that I believe that the amount of resources that are either stolen from the economy or out-rightly mismanaged by government far exceeds the federal budget per annum.
“Ours is about a N100 trillion economy, and I will be shocked if the government pretends that it does not know that currently about 10 per cent of the GDP falls into a ‘black hole’ on annual basis,” he said.
“We have not added figures based on counterfactual analysis such as the cost to the aggregate economy of bad or misguided economic policy. For example, in today’s THISDAY Newspaper, a headline news reports that “Aliko Dangote, Africa’s Richest Man, Loses $7.8 Billion as Naira, Stocks Plunge” while reporting that “In dollar terms, the devaluation has knocked more than $40 billion off the value of Nigeria’s economy. Of course, most people predicted that OIL PRICES would soon fall but we were caught unprepared, and today, the parallel market exchange rate is N225 to the dollar,” Soludo explained.
Soludo noted that “thus, the kind of analysis in today’s THISDAY is just one little example of the kind of collateral damages–‘costs’ or ‘losses’– that mismanagement foists on the system.
“To repeat, my article did not focus on the federal budget: the mismanagement of the consumption budget and its unprecedented debt accumulation (with low value-for-money expenditures) are entirely different matters. What I found particularly disconcerting as a Nigerian from the comments I read is the fixation to validation from the World Bank.”
Soludo said he had read several editorial comments of Nigerian media, adding that they do not agree with the ‘impression’ of the World Bank official.
According to him, he had also read a similar comment by a high government official stating that World Bank officials and CNN had told them that government was doing well and therefore who else could question them.
“But neither the World Bank nor CNN conducts comprehensive independent surveys on the economy— they comment based on the data they are given— and their subjective “opinions” cannot substitute for hard facts. The World Bank is not a statistical agency. I can provide a long list of countries that World Bank reports praised as ‘star performers’ and they slumped into deep crisis almost immediately after. Check out the World Bank and IMF reports on the US and other countries’ economies shortly before the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis in fifty years (the Great Recession of 2008/09).
“Actually for many countries once they start getting such ‘praises’, then perceptive officials begin to worry. Nigeria is probably the only country where its government officials quote the World Bank while ignoring data from its own statistical agency,” Soludo explained.
“A serious concern is that while government relies on external validation (opinion) as ‘proof’ of its performance, it is selective in the process—accepting the positive ones and disparaging the negative ones. Our recent exchanges illustrate the point. In my first article (26th January): “Buhari Vs Jonathan: Beyond the Elections”, I argued that “the economy seems to be on auto pilot, with confusion as to who is in charge, and government largely as a constraint.
There are no big ideas, and it is difficult to see where economic policy is headed to. My thesis is that the Nigerian economy, if properly managed, should have been growing at an annual rate of about 12 per cent given the oil boom, and poverty and unemployment should have fallen dramatically over the last five years”. No one has credibly challenged the above, except what the Financial Times of London described as a “furious response by the Minister”. But, the influential Economist Magazine of London and New York Times agreed with us,” he said.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/soludo-jonathan-missed-the-point-on-missing-n30tn/202676/
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