GODWIN EMEFIELE:- Where The Flub Began And How It Continues

By Suleiman Muhammad Auwal.

Immediately after assuming office on 4th June 2014, Godwin Emefiele, the ousted CBN governor, went ahead to prove his inexperience stand, by devaluing Naira note three times in less than a year.

The financial imposter continued his trial and error with our economy by introducing the new Foreign Exchange (FX) policy where market forces assumed to determine the value of naira to any foreign currency, even when he knew that we are practicing mono-economy and stands as import oriented economic country whose import is largely greater than export.

Emeifele later changed it to another way when he destroyed the Naira and took it to almost N400 to one dollar ($). In fact he made sure that our currency took its way of becoming Zimbabwe’s Kwanza.

Emefiele continued his fumbles by selfishly giving the FX allocation to selected individuals within the circle of government, his friends and family, an act that brought in shortage in our forex market, increase in demand for foreign currency as well as decline in value of the Naira note. In this case, some manufacturing industries that usually imported raw materials meant for production, alternatively opted to meet their forex demand expensively through black market exchange which later increased the cost of production and instability in the price of goods and services. As a result, most of the apex bank policies on curbing of inflations rate failed.

Although Emefiele and his Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) kept on displaying their inexperience action by using only monetary rate (i.e interest rate, Cash Reserve Ratio and Asemetric corridor) even when its not yielding a better result.

In October 2022, Emefiele came-up with currency redesigned agenda with a deliberate inept plan to implement it which caused hardship to Nigerians. The Punch Newspaper published on 6 March 2023 reported some experts saying that about N20 trillions got lost and many business were shutdown as result.

Recently, Daily Trust uncovered how he indirectly devaluated Naira from N455 to N630 through import and export window of FX market, the report CBN would later deny.

An investigation carried on by the House of Representative adhoc committee under the leadership of Hon. Mark Gbillah discovered how the CBN paid N32.5 billions to companies without the consent of the Attorney General of the Federation.

The committee pointed out that the said amount was paid to Messrs GSCL Consulting And Bizlus .

The Gbillah committee investigated an alleged payment of $200 million to firm for “consultancy services.”

The Department of State Services (DSS) had on last year December, sought to file charges of money laundering and terrorism financing against Emefiele but forces within the previous government frustrated the move.

In a nutshell Godwin Emefiele did a serious havoc to our economy which may economists decades to repair the.

Emefile failed his duty as well as core mandate of working on price stability as CBN governor, its really infelicitous that inflation rate now is 22. 24% and exchange rate close to N800 to 1$, something he met at 8.2% and N167.2 to $1 respectively.

Suleiman Muhammad Auwal 08063410440
aumodibbo@gmail.com