The Senate has expressed the fear that Nigeria may not recover N358 billion about 30 per cent of the N1.1 trillion Anchor Borrowers.

The Senate said the N1.1 trillion has an impressive repayment rate of up to 70 per cent but added that the rest of the 30 per cent amounting to N358 billion are loans given to low-income farmers which have very high risk.

This came up yesterday at the Senate Ad-hoc Committee probing the N30 trillion Ways and Means loans to the federal government and Anchor Borrowers Programme.

The chairman of the committee, Isah Jibrin (Kogi East), who met with officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at the National Assembly, said they must do everything to recover the debt.

The CBN team was led by the deputy governor for corporate services, Bala Bello, who made presentations on “Ways and Means and Anchor Borrowers”.

Senator Jibrin said the committee was able to extract useful information from them, which would guide their next level of discussion.

He said the committee had issues with approvals in areas where it was discovered that the CBN governor “unilaterally gave approvals”, which is abnormal to the committee.
The committee could not get immediate explanation for that and therefore gave 24 hours to provide the necessary explanation.

Meanwhile, the Senate has extended the implementation of the 2023 Supplementary Appropriation Act from 31st March, 2024 to 30th June, 2024.
The Senate had earlier extended the life span of the N21.8 trillion 2023 budget from 31st December 2023 to March 31, 2024.

The extension of the budget lifeline followed the Second reading of the bill read by the Senate leader, Bamidele Michael Opeyemi (Ekiti Central).
Bamidele said the release of capital component of the budget to the MDAs is unlikely to be utilize before March 31, 2023 if it is not extended.