Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Olayemi Cardoso on Tuesday revealed that the apex bank has recovered roughly N2 trillion from a sprawling web of legacy intervention funds after an internal audit exposed a staggering N10.93 trillion portfolio dating back years.
Speaking at the post-Monetary Policy Committee press conference, Cardoso disclosed that N4.69 trillion of those facilities remain unpaid, tying up capital that once fuelled moral hazard and crowded out private-sector lending.
“This is a colossal sum sitting outside the banking system and distorting everything,” Cardoso said. “Since this administration took office, we have managed to bring back about N2 trillion. That money belonged to the Nigerian people—it was never free.”
The audit findings, he stressed, explain why the CBN under his leadership has completely abandoned quasi-fiscal operations and returned to textbook central banking.
For years, heavily subsidised intervention schemes—offered at single-digit rates and sometimes with indefinite moratoriums—turned the central bank into Nigeria’s biggest development financier. Commercial banks and development finance institutions were effectively sidelined, unable to compete with the CBN’s below-market terms.
Cardoso was blunt: “When the central bank becomes the cheapest lender in town, why would anyone borrow from a commercial bank at 20–25%? The entire incentive structure collapsed.”
He warned that any attempt to launch fresh interventions while billions remain trapped in old ones would reignite inflationary pressures and undermine hard-won credibility.
Instead, the CBN now positions itself as a coordinator rather than a competitor, using moral suasion to push commercial banks and multilateral lenders into priority sectors such as agriculture, MSMEs, and infrastructure.
“We are instilling a new culture: if you borrow public funds, you repay. Simple,” the governor said, adding that the ongoing recovery exercise will continue aggressively until every legacy distortion is cleared.
The disclosure came alongside the MPC’s decision to hold the Monetary Policy Rate at 27% and maintain other tightening parameters, citing the sharp drop in October headline inflation to 16.05% and a dramatic easing in food inflation to 13.12%.
Analysts hailed the clean-up as one of the most significant, yet under-reported, achievements of the Cardoso era, noting that every naira recovered strengthens the CBN’s balance sheet and reduces the need for inflationary money printing.
For Nigeria’s business community, the message is clear: the days of near-free central bank cash are over for good.
