Harboursandport.com: Abuja - The Senate has threatened to issue a warrant of arrest for the Finance Minister, CBN Governor, Trade Minister, Development Bank of Nigeria, DBN, Bank Of Industry, BOI, others over alleged uneven disbursement of N500 billion Loans by DBN.
The Senate also summoned the heads of the above-mentioned agencies as it began probe into the alleged un-even disbursement of loans to MSMES in the six geo-political regions by the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) to the tune of N500 billion Loan by the Nigeria Development Bank, DBN.
The Probe Committee which is Chaired by Senator Sani Musa, Niger East has also vowed to arrest the Managing Director of Bank of Industry, Olukayode Pitan, the Managing Director of Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending ( NIRSAL), Aliyu Abdulhamid and the Director General of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria ( SMEDAN), Olawale Fasanya if they fail to appear before the Committee.
The Senate Committee probing the alleged un-even disbursement of loans to MSMES in the six geo-political regions by the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) had last week summoned the banks.
The Committee's threat became imperative when the five agencies were conspicuously absent at the investigative hearing yesterday on the alleged uneven disbursement of the N500 billion development fund.
Not happy with their absence, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Sani Musa who noted that out of the eight relevant government agencies needed for the investigation, five were invited to appear before the committee at the Wednesday session, said, " Out of these five, only two came while the remaining three which are the CBN, BOI, and NIRSAL, were conspicuously absent without any letter from them explaining why.
"Assignment before this committee is a very important one, requiring cooperation and compliance from all those linked to issues at hand.
" MD of DBN and his counterpart from the Bank of Agriculture are here for required clarifications and explanations, making it mandatory for CBN Gov, MD of BOI, and DG of NISRAL to appear unfailingly in subsequent sessions or risk being coerced through the issuance of a warrant of arrest."
According to him, Ministers of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, Trade and Investment, Niyi Adebayo, and Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq, will appear before the committee on Thursday( today) this week for required submissions on roles played in the alleged uneven disbursement of funds.
In his presentation before the committee, the Managing Director of DBN, Tony Okpanachi who denied deliberate lopsidedness in the disbursement of the fund, said that laid down criteria set by the Central Bank of Nigeria were used for fund disbursement, adding, "Our lending has criteria and they are the same with those set by the Central Bank of Nigeria."
Okpanachi who explained that for a business to qualify for the DBN loan, it must have less than 250 employees and must not have done a turnover of more than N1.1 billion, said, "We do a risk assessment of the participating financial institutions (PFIs) before they begin to lend to businesses. We don't want to give out money and the money fritters away. So we track the end users of the loans yearly."
According to him, the location of the registered MSMEs in Nigeria also explained the reason for the loan's disbursement, adding that out of the registered MSMEs across Nigeria, Lagos alone has 25%, South West 23%, South South 18%, South East 10%, North Central 10%, North West 9%, FCT 4% and North East 2%.
The DBN boss who informed the committee that DBN has asked participating financial institutions to build the capacity of smallscale businesses, and train them on how to structure their businesses for them to be able to access the loans, said, "For DBN, it's a continuous process to get more businesses on board."
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