The House of Representatives is to investigate the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN ) over its last staff recruitment exercise.

The lawmakers said due process was not adhered to in the exercise said to be lopsided with some sections of the country unfairly disadvantaged.

House Committees on Banking and Currency and Federal Character were mandated to investigate and report back within four weeks.

The decision of the lawmakers followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance by Ali Madaki  (APC, Kano ), who regretted that CBN deliberately breached the federal character principle by carrying out the recruitment in secret without advertisements.

According to him, the secret recruitment has generated negative reactions from several sections of the country with accusations of lopsidedness.

“Sometimes last year when members of the public got wind of the secret recruitment exercise, the CBN came out and out rightly denied any such recruitment or plan to recruit

“But what do we have now, findings have shown otherwise coupled with the fact that principle of federal character, equity and justice was ignored,” he said.

The motion was unanimously adopted after it was put to a voice vote by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara.

In another development, the House has set motion the process of scrapping the Peoples Bank of Nigeria (PBN).

This followed the second reading of the bill sponsored by Goni Lawan (APC, Yobe ).

Goni and other proponents of the bill said the bank was of no economic or financial benefits to Nigerians any more since it ceased to exist with its merger with some other banks.

On the other hand, the opponents of the bill opined that rather than being scrapped, government should find means of repositioning it since its mandate was to serve the downtrodden who could not access money deposit banks for soft loans.

The bill however went through after it was put to a voice vote by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara.

Source: The Nation