Apparently before the election Nigeria had over $40 billion which reduced to $37 billion?? This money was in our foreign reserves last year, Where has it all gone to??!

The foreign reserve is still there, but it is not government's money. It is actually just foreign exchange that the CBN has acquired and has paid the full Naira equivalent to those who supplied it - it belongs to the CBN. This is what the CBN sells to those who need foreign currency, but they have to pay the Naira equivalent to the CBN.

You might be thinking about the Excess Crude Account (ECA), which is governments spendable foreign money, but is not the same as the foreign reserve. The ECA had about $20 billion when Yar'adua/GEJ took over. They blew through half or so of it before GEJ took over, and he "eradicated" the rest a few months after he became president. That is where they would usually go to get the subsidy funds, but it is all gone now.

The ECA itself is no more, and has been replaced with the Soveireign Wealth Fund into which they dumped the last $1 billion from the ECA account.

So we had $20 billion, half of which was blow during Yar'adua's regime and the rest during GJ's 1st year??!!

#pathetic

@Koruji, but CBN is owned by the government right? so the foreign reserve money is still government's , right?

Although we have been unable to grow our foreign reserve account in recent years, it still holds more than $30 billion dollars.

The same, of course, cannot be said for the much depleted Excess Crude Account (ECA),n [/b]- which is now being used to fund [b]y[/b]et [b]a[/b]nother[b] r[/b]evenue [b]s[/b]haring [b]a[/b]rrangement (YARSA) known as the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)

so WE still have $30 billion right??!!

THURSDAY, 08 DECEMBER 2011 13:39 REUTERS
Nigeria's foreign reserves stood at $32.99 billion at December 2, its lowest since Nov. 9, as the central bank struggles to sustain stability in the domestic foreign exchange market, the central bank data showed on Thursday.

The forex reserves of Africa's top energy producer were at $32.96 billion a year ago, but remain under pressure from strong domestic demand for the dollar and low accretion from oil revenue.

The central bank moved its target trading band for the naira last month to +/-3 percent around 155 naira, from +/-3 percent around 150 due to prolonged strong demand on available dollar which gradually eaten deep into its reserves.

Source: http://businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php/news/76-hot-topic/30678-nigerian-foreign-reserves-down-to-4-weeks-low