The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, yesterday, said that Nigeria received N6.24 trillion ($40 billion) as oil revenue from January to November last year.

Meanwhile, the apex bank retained its tight money supply policy, as it left the Monetary Policy Rate, MPR, at 12 per cent.

In a communiqué issued at the Monetary Policy Committee, MPC, of the CBN, yesterday, the apex bank said: "In the first 11 months of 2012, oil receipts totalled US$40.087 billion."

This, it said, enhanced the stability of the exchange rate and built up of the external reserves.

It said: "Overall, the relative stability recorded in the foreign exchange market could be attributed to the combined effects of improved supply of foreign exchange by oil companies and enhanced capital inflows from portfolio investors during the period under review.

"The Committee expressed satisfaction with the sustained accretion to external reserves which stood at US$43.849 billion as at December 31, 2012, representing an increase of US$1.682 billion or about 3.98 per cent from the level of US$42.167 billion at end-October 2012.

“Relative to the end-December 2011 level of US$32.915 billion, the external reserves at the end of December 2012, had risen by US$10.934 billion or 33.21 per cent. The increase in the level of foreign reserves was driven mainly by proceeds from crude oil and gas exports and crude oil related taxes as well as reduced funding of the WDAS on account of the huge inflow of foreign portfolio investments, which was about 77.0 per cent of total inflows through the CBN.

Source: http://odili.net/news/source/2013/jan/22/334.html

How has this affected the lives of the ordinary Nigerian $40bn earnings on oil, what about the taxes collected internally by FG which we know are in excess of N2.7tn? If I do a very basic assumption that $12bn was saved by FG as external savings. it means this FG wasted well over $28bn over the course of last year. Yet you keep hearing of GEJ and NOI talking about borrowing to finance capital projects when there is so much liquid cash in revenue earnings from Oil and Taxes.