Anthony Iwuoma
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Sunday, took a swipe at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the ousted governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, describing it as a ‘Den of Malfeasance’.
Speaking during his national broadcast to mark Nigeria’s 63rd independence anniversary, the president vowed to expose and deal with the rot in the apex bank.
He said: “I pledged a thorough house cleaning of the den of malfeasance the CBN had become. That housecleaning is well underway.”
According to him: “A new leadership for the Central Bank has been constituted. Also, my special investigator will soon present his findings on past lapses and how to prevent similar reoccurrences. Henceforth, monetary policy shall be for the benefit of all and not the exclusive province of the powerful and wealthy.”
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The president had fired Emefiele a couple of weeks after assuming office on May 29, 2023, and ordered a probe of the CBN under the former governor, who was appointed by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari
The president had told Nigerians in the Diaspora after booting out Emefiele, that the former apex bank governor supervised a “rotten financial system” that benefited a few individuals.
“The financial system was rotten. Few people make bags of our money and then you yourself, you stopped sending money home to our poor parents. Several windows. But that is gone now, is gone,” Tinubu said.
Indeed, as the president had noted in his speech, Emefiele’s monetary policy benefited only a few powerful and wealthy people. His controversial multiple exchange rates policy created loopholes that a few individuals took advantage of and made huge illicit gains through round-tripping while the entire country bore the consequences of their actions that took inflation to an all-time high.
This much was confirmed by Laolu Akande, a media aide to former vice president Yemi Osinbajo.
He confessed: “His (Emefiele) shenanigans the colossal damages he perpetrated at the CBN was to the utter detriment of the Nigerian people. This is not even about cashless policy, but apparent corruption especially in the dual exchange rate policy which never made sense. What a sigh of relief.”
Perhaps, the worst of Emefiele’s policies implemented by CBN under Emefiele’s watch was the contentious naira redesign policy of the Buhari administration.
Under the policy, the apex bank announced the redesign of N200, N500 and N1,000 banknotes, following the request from the Federal Government.
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However, the chaotic implementation of the policy led to frustration and indefinable hardship on Nigerians, resulting in multiple court cases and eventual reversal. Till date, nobody really knows the actual state of that policy as both the old and new naira banknotes are in circulation simultaneously after wasting billions of naira on the stillborn policy.
There are yet several other financial infractions, involving the CBN, running into trillions of naira during Emefiele’s infamous tenure, such as the illegal loan of over N22 trillion to the Federal Government, as Ways and Means. The money was believed to have reportedly contributed to hyping inflation in the country. Ironically, the Buhari administration only moved to get the required National Assembly approval for such a loan a few days before its exit from office.
Another vexatious issue was the stamp duty scandal, which the CBN dismissed as untrue.
A member of the House of Representatives from Jigawa, Gudaji Kazaure, in a viral video, had alleged that the CBN governor tried to cover up facts about the collection of N89 trillion stamp duty.
He also claimed that a committee set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to look into the alleged stamp duty funds being withheld by the CBN, which he chaired, was deliberately being denied access to present its preliminary report.
Kazaure urged Buhari to either allow him to present his report to him or immediately order a thorough investigation of the alleged stamp duty funds.
Additionally, Kazaure accused Emefiele of keeping another $171 billion in the bank’s private investors’ account as proceeds of stamp duty.
However, Garba Shehu, the then Senior Special Assistant to President Buhari on Media, dismissed the allegations of misappropriation of stamp duty funds by some government agencies and described Kazaure’s committee as illegal. He added that the committee had been dissolved on the orders of Buhari.
The apex bank also said allegations that it did not account for stamp duty collection were without basis.
With the appointment of Yemi Cardoso, as the new helmsman at the CBN, expectations are high that as President Tinubu promised, the apex bank would soon be sanitised and put in the right position to evolve and implement disciplined and sound economic policies that would pull the country away from its present mess.
