If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you will agree that this is not the best of times for the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr Godwin Emefiele.
While many of us who transact online businesses are struggling to fund our domiciliary accounts with scarce forex while trying to convince our clients of the need to pay a little bit higher for the services that we offer, Mr Godwin Emefiele is being subjected to immense public scrutiny and criticism by the public due to the continuous weakening of the Naira in both parallel and official markets.
Although Emefiele is an alumnus of Harvard University and Wharton School of Business who studied Banking and Finance at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) and graduated as one of the best students in his class of 1984, he seems to have run out of ideas as it relates to the stability of the nation’s currency.
When he took over from Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi in 2014 as the CBN Governor, we exchanged one US Dollar for N180 in the parallel market. Under his watch, the Naira has further depreciated, defying his numerous forex policies.
We will not forget in a hurry how he placed a ban on the sale of FX to the Bureau De Change (BDC) operators in July of 2021. According to him, the operators worked with corrupt people to conduct money laundering in Nigeria. At this point, the parallel market rate was around $1/N450 in the parallel market.
The most interesting of it all was when he vowed to arrest Mr Olumide Oniwinde on 17th September 2021. In case you’re not aware, Olumide Oniwinde was the owner of the popular forex publishing platform, AbokiFX. Emefiele accused him of milking the economy, manipulating the exchange rate, and economic sabotage. At this point, $1 was exchanged for N560 at the parallel market.
With the above measures, among several other measures, one would expect the Naira to bounce back, but this has not been the case.
Nevertheless, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, as the key to the puzzle that Emefiele has been struggling with may just have been found by the immediate past Minister of State for Education, Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba.
Nwajuba and a group approached the Federal High Court in Abuja a few days ago, asking it to declare him as the authentic Presidential candidate of the APC while also asking the court to cancel the votes garnered by the Presidential candidates of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu; and the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar because they bribed delegates with Dollars.
Just in case you may have forgotten, Nwajiuba was one of those who ‘chopped breakfast’ after he purchased the APC presidential form for N100m but ended up scoring one vote.
If Emefiele wants the Naira to bounce back against the Dollars, the man who scored one vote in the APC Presidential primaries has unravelled the puzzle. Let him go after the top two Presidential candidates, and within one week, one US Dollar will return to N180 Naira, the same way he met it in 2014, as against N710, which it is currently exchanging for at the parallel market.
©️John Olugbemi
Sunday, 31st July 2022.
