Adams Oshiomhole, the senator representing Edo North on Saturday said the excessive printing of money” by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under former President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration through the Ways and Means policy crippled the Nigeria’s naira.

Speaking during the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF)’s Meeting and Interactive Session in Benin City, Edo State, Oshiomhole blamed the policy for the eventual collapse of the Nigerian currency against the US dollar.

According to the former Governor of Edo State, Nigeria was borrowing every day, which has become President Bola Tinubu’s burden to pay back those loans to guarantee the sovereignty of Nigeria.

He said, “We are coming from a country that was almost like Zimbabwe or Idi Amin’s Uganda, where he asked the Central Bank governor ‘, Go and print more money for us to share with the people’.

“And the governor said, ‘If we print more money, Uganda currency will be like a sheet of paper’.

“This is what the immediate past CBN governor was doing. In the Senate, we have the record that they printed over ₦31 trillion, which they called Ways and Means. You know, when the government wants to deceive people, they use jargon.

“They called it Ways and Means, but I can tell you what it means: it means a situation in which the government prints banknotes, not based on what we have earned or any resources, just prints banknotes to go and share with the people to meet their money illusion.

“It is the result of the excessive printing of banknotes that led to the collapse of the naira.

“To understand the root cause of the present cost of living and the exchange rate regime, you must trace it and locate it in terms of the excessive amount of banknotes through so-called Ways and Means, which the past government created and which this government has eliminated.”