Director-General of the Debt Management of (DMO), Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, is not scheming to extend his stay at the Agency when his second five-year tenure ends in June 2017, sources at DMO and the Vice President’s Office, which supervises DMO, said on Monday afternoon. The sources dismissed rumours making the rounds that Dr. Nwankwo is reluctant to leave at the expiration of his tenure and that his purported ambition to stay on is generating tension or uneasiness at DMO.

“The rumours are not only senseless but also entirely false and ridiculous,” one of the sources said.

Insisting that “there is no iota of truth in the rumours,” the source declared that Dr. Nwankwo has no reason to scheme to extend his tenure, adding that that it is not even possible to do so.

He said: “The law is specific on the issue; no one can do more than two terms of five years each at DMO. So why should the DG, who is in the last lap of his second tenure, nurse the idea of extending his tenure? Those who cooked up and are spreading the rumours do not know Dr. Nwankwo at all. He is a principled man who has built DMO into a globally-respected institution that impacts greatly on Nigeria’s economic fortunes and is contented with the two terms of office allowed by law.”

Also dismissing the rumours, a source at the Vice President’s Office described those behind them as enemies of Nigeria. He warned them to desist from spreading rumours capable of destabilising the country’s economy “in which DMO is playing a pivotal role and contributing significantly to the efforts to pull the country out of recession.”