Nigeria’s central bank says report on its finances inaccurate  

Nigeria’s apex financial institution, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has said media reports about its finances were inaccurate as it distorted and misrepresented the bank’s financial operations.

It said the story published under the title “CBN’s life support to FG rises 780% to N8.12trn in 4yrs” was restrictive by focusing “only on CBN’s claims on the Federal Government while ignoring other numerous deposits of the Federal Government, including those of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), with the CBN.”

The CBN in a statement made available to journalists on Thursday explained that when the claims of the Federal Government on CBN are netted against the claims of the CBN on the Federal Government, “the resulting net positions indicate that the FG was actually the net creditor to CBN in 2014, 2015 and 2017 to the tune of N2.14 trillion, N1.65 trillion and N0.36 trillion, respectively,” adding that conversely, “CBN was the net creditor to the FG in 2016 and 2018 to the tune of N0.11 trillion and N0.34 trillion, respectively.”

According to it, it was clearly inappropriate to compare the position as at end-2018 with the position as at end-2014, and ignoring the movements within the period.