By MATTHEW OKORO, Umuahia

A Nigerian entrepreneur of repute, Prof. Greg Ibe, has described as false, a purported recent claim by the Central Bank f Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to the effect that people in the South East were not applying for loans from the Nigerian apex bank.

On the contrary, Ibe who is the Chancellor/Founder of Gregory University, Uturu, said that the truth was that applications for loans by businessmen and farmers from South East were not being honoured by the CBN.

Fielding questions from newsmen at Uturu, Ibe who is a governorship hopeful in Abia State, disclosed that after reading in the social media, a purported press release by the CBN where Emefiele allegedly made the claim, he posted the online report to banks which told him that the CBN was only playing to the gallery.

“In fact, when I got the news, I sent the same news to some of the banks which have denied us loan and they said I shouldn’t mind CBN, they are playing to the gallery so that people will think if there is perceived injustice to South East, that we are the reason why we are not benefitting. No, it is not so,” he said.

Prof. Ibe went further to describe the claim by the CBN Governor as “blatant storytelling,” as he challenged the CBN to publish loans applications from South Easterners, as well as those that the bank acceded to their request.

“In fact, if he calls himself an Igbo man, so to say, since he is from Delta, he has not succeeded in helping anybody within the South East of Nigeria,” the Professor of Entrepreneurship added.

He said: “My reasons are obvious: we in Songhai have applied for loans to be able to develop the Songhai initiatives in our university and nobody gave us.

“We have used Bank of Industry, we have used Bank of Agriculture; for everything you apply through banks is meeting a Waterloo, it will end on that particular place.”

He alleged that when people from the South East embraced the NIRSAL loan, it was reduced from between N50 million and N100 million to a paltry N5 million and 10 million.

“When South East people design their thinking, prepare themselves to do that, the money is reduced. Before, it used to be N50 million or N100 million.

“By the time our people and the students I taught entrepreneurship across all the universities in the South East decided to go into it, then they started giving N5 million.

“N5 million, it can start off something, but it shouldn't be that because somebody is not growing food for his particular family, he wants to go into real commercial (agriculture).

“So, all those people that applied, I want to know how many people they have granted loan. They should publish it for South East. And then, let them also request to know how many South Easterners that have applied that they didn't give. We can present documentations.

Prof. Ibe alleged that Igbo Businessmen were being denied access to loans even as other alternative financial avenues were being blocked.

He advised the federal government to grant South East people access to CBN loans to enable them to join in boosting Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP), saying that this would ultimately turn around the economy.

“If they want to create the enabling environment for the GDP to increase, let them turn the money to South East and then do it one digit and make it open to our people, then you will see that the South East will create more money for this country,” he asserted.

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