The number one banker in a West African nation is currently fiddling with his country’s currency whilst it’s economy burns. He is doing it exactly the same way Emperor Nero fiddled with his fingers hundreds of years ago whilst Rome was burning to ashes.
Godwin Emefiele, the CBN Governor of Nigeria is the villain I’m talking about here. Our economy has been on fire for over a year now, how does he attempt to stabilise it? He keeps playing around with forex and other important economic indices at the detriment of the Naira.
After finally lifting the embargo on incoming and outgoing forex a month ago, he woke up yesterday morning and placed a partial embargo on outgoing forex; that meant for medical and academic ‘tourism’. What is the CBN’s business if someone wants to use his hard earned cash to go for a medical check-up or further his/her education abroad?
In times like this, I’m convinced that I’m a better Economist than the CBN honcho, even though my only bragging rights to being a top economist is the B3 WAEC gave me some years ago.
I won’t really blame the fumbling Emiefele for fiddling with the Naira the way he has been doing for months now, I’ll blame his banking background and also the people he’s currently working with. Emefiele spent most of his Zenith Bank career as a financial controller(same background as our finance minister) and I’m not sure he knows much about fiscal policy formulation.
In other words, he’s a banker and not an economist. Let’s not also forget that the Zenith Bank he worked with for the better part of 20 years pioneered the high risk, deposit driven commercial banking that is in place today. Little wonder he’s taking all sorts of risks in his attempt to find a policy balance; forgetting that the CBN is only supposed to be exposed to as little risk as possible.
Emiefele was one of Jonathan’s biggest mistakes. Going forward, I recommend that the FG should stop appointing career bankers as CBN Governors. They should instead promote the deputy director who oversees fiscal policy to that position, or source for a well grounded economist in the mould of Soludo.
Sanusi had a banking background quite alright but his success was as a result of his background in Risk Management. He spent his time as CBN Governor stoppering all the leakages in the banking system. In addition, Godwin’s shortcomings were only exposed after Buhari took over because he had a well grounded, world class economist behind him during the last dispensation.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was the engine room that generated most of the economic policies that made the previous government operate with much more stability. In the current regime, Emefiele reports to a finance minister who is as helpless, or if not more helpless than he is.
As a patriotic Nigerian, I will end this tome with a very sincere, face saving suggestion to the current government. Mr President should disband his economic team asap; the axe should fall on Kemi Adeosun and Godwin Emiefele with immediate effect.
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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Opinion article written by Simon Utsu.
