Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Tuesday said she would no longer reply the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Charles Soludo, over claims that that N30 trillion has been pilfered from the treasury under her watch.

She said though constrained to reply Prof. Soludo over allegations that N30 trillion had been stolen under her watch as the minister of finance, she would rather not join issues with the former Central Bank governor.

Soludo had penned a comprehensive article last week accusing the present government of mismanagement of funds.

In a rejoinder to Okonjo-Iweala’s comments last week where she described him as the worst CBN governor the country ever had, Soludo on Sunday said the nation was in for a very turbulent time this year because the economy had been grossly mismanaged, Okonjo-Iweala.

But while responding to questions on a Raypower live radio programme the minister said Soludo’s claims “is part of the misinformation that I want Nigerians to avoid. I don’t want to enter that debate. We have answered him, I don’t want to join issues and you don’t join issues when things don’t make any sense.”

In a similar vein she said, the claims that she delayed the forensic investigation into allegations of unremitted oil funds by the NNPC whose report was submitted on Monday were baseless.

In her words; “There has been a lot of misinformation that is being put out and it is sad for me because people said in November I talked to the Financial Times (FT) in London and that the report will be ready in a few weeks and that is true. I have not been controlling this audit, it has been with the Auditor General because PricewaterHouse actually said that the Ministry of Finance has a position on the issue and they would also need to interview us.

“Therefore, there is no way that the minister could be responsible for this report and the neutral party whose job it is in government was appointed to take over and control, which is the Auditor General and I said that at the FT but conveniently as has persistently been the case, Nigerians have been misinformed, they left out the part that I said the Auditor General is in charge.

“I am one of the people being interviewed for it so there is no way I could be in charge. They tried to paint it as if I am responsible for that report. It is part of the packaging and misinformation in this politics and it has to stop,” she said.

Asked about the state of the economy and if the country is broke, the minister said People have tried in the opposition to package this, they have been saying it. Three years ago they said the economy was broke, two years ago it was broke, now it is broke, they just wish the economy to be broke, they want to get Nigerians alarmed…Has the country not been running?”

“Now they saw that oil prices are falling and they are holding on to that. I have been very clear in saying that it is going to be a difficult year for the country, but this is something we can manage.”

Continuing, she said: “The other story going around is that we are not able to pay salary. In December, the reason why salary took so long was because the payroll system we are using actually locked out some agencies when they tried to pay more people that are not in the system. The system locked out 14 agencies and we had to restore them for payment manually.