Mr. Godwin Emefiele the CBN governor’s prognosis may be reading mild headache, but if he carves out time for diagnosis, doctors would probably tell him that ‘migraine is on the cards and if not properly and appropriately treated, it might fester into acute condition.’
The governors’ migraine may either be mechanical (man made) or pathological, but he does not depict that anything is amiss. Painfully, there is yet no art of finding the mind’s construction in the face as he goes about everyday with a smile creased on his face searching for the alchemy to stem the naira’s free fall. But if there is a peep into the inner recess of his mind an amazing riotous activities would be observed.
You may not believe it, but one of them would be why didn’t I stay in my comfort zone? At the Zenith Bank Plc, he was the Lord and his words were law and order. Everything was laid out for his comfort and control. The management and staff of the bank fell over themselves to execute his orders and instructions. He was the leader and the boss and not one among the equals. Then he was elevated to the position of the governor of the CBN, a lift that took him from his comfort zone to a high responsibility of managing the nation’s monetary policy and the economy. It was also a promotion into the arena of high-wire politics of monetary production and management which is testing the staying power of his integrity.
He told the nation on assumption of office that the devaluation of the country’s currency was not an item in his policy agenda, rather he would defend the naira with everything in him. However within a space of a year, he was twice forced to pull down the value of the naira from N156 to N190 a dollar allowing it to experience a period of free fall to N220 per dollar at the black market.
A source said that the governor is full of thoughts on how to tame wide speculation on the naira against the dollar as his continuing defense of the currency is depleting the foreign reserves amidst unfavourable developments around crude oil price at the international oil market.
Every moment, he calls the meeting of the apex bank’s eggheads made up of the directors to agonise on how to deal with what they termed the Nigerian peculiar monetary challenge. These directors sit with him at the solution table watching the governor with hawk eyes and helping him to articulate plausible reasons why the policies he is churning out to help the nation’s economy may or may not yield the desired result. Hardly did he know that those sitting with him at the solution table are partly responsible for his headache until it was revealed that some of the directors and politicians are co-owners of most of the operating Bureaux -de-Change (BDC) –an official segment of the forex market where naira value had recorded its highest decline as their demand continued to rise. Some are said to operate multiple bureau-de- change. So whenever the CBN delivered a chunk of dollars to the Retail Dutch Auction System (RDAS) for forex transactions, the hawks clear them into their BDCs from where they are emptied into the black market at extra charges, thereby weakening the naira further.
The CBN took some bold steps and stopped the RDAS where speculation were said to have flourished and directed all forex buyers to the interbank market. It also planned to automate the foreign exchange market so as to ensure that transactions would essentially be conducted electronically, thereby eliminating usage of cash that had aided arbitrage and round-tripping in the market. It then directed banks to submit details of domiciliary accounts of their corporate and individual customers, a development which caused anxiety in the industry. Those are significant steps, but not sufficient as it scratched the problem. The CBN must go the whole hug to nail the glitch. The hawks are still there and the enemy within is most dangerous.
Thorough investigation is recommended to weed the CBN of bad eggs. As long as the hawks remain in the house, total solution will be a mirage.
Emefiele must take some bold and drastic steps to deal with the issues. This is because Muhammadu Buhari, the President elect, may not be patient with him. He wants solution and not excuses. That is where I stand.
Charles Ike-Okoh
