THE House of Representatives, on Thursday, insisted that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mr. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, violated the constitution of the Federal Republic by unilaterally printing N420 billion without the approval of the National Assembly, just as it said it had no sympathy for debtors of banks whose managing directors were sacked recently by the CBN.

Chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency, Honourable Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, made the declaration while addressing newsmen. He said Mr. Sanusi was wrong to have printed the money and given it as loans to the five banks, saying the CBN governor must, therefore, await parliament’s sanctions once members, who were currently on recess, resumed.

The affected banks are Oceanic Bank, Intercontinental Bank, Afribank, Union Bank and FinBank. The lawmaker, who spoke on the outcome of the closed-door session his committee had with the CBN boss, on Wednesday, and the allegation that he used the writing pad of one of the debtors to one of the affected banks, Rockson Engineering Limited, to write the speech he delivered at the opening session, declared that nothing in the issues raised at the parley suggested that the Committee on Banking and Currency was backing any of the banks’ debtors.

According to Ozongbachi, it was not true that the speech he delivered at the probe of the unapproved loan granted by CBN governor, was written on a bank debtor’s writing pad, explaining that he had a speech already prepared by his committee clerk, which did not capture the entire issues at stake.

He explained further that he only made additional jottings on the said writing pad, noting that he could have done same on the CBN and other writing pads that he presented at the briefing, which he said were all available to him at the time of Sanusi’s appearance.

Ozongbachi argued that his committee, like the Northern caucus of the House which spoke at the weekend, was not opposed to the sack of the managing directors of the five affected banks, their prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as well as the efforts by the commission to recover huge sums of debts they owed, but the manner in which the N420billion was given to those banks without appropriation by the National Assembly.

The legislator argued further that what members of the committee had done was to assert their constitutional right by demanding that the constitution, which they swore to protect, be upheld by Sanusi, wondering how the real issues at stake helped the cause of any bank debtor.

He declared that the matter was not over yet, noting that Sanusi had failed to convince the committee on the status of the N420 billion. Ozongbachi said it was the belief of the committee that as practised all over the world, bailout was a treasury matter and should have been brought to the National Assembly for approval.
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