Buhari reappoints Emefiele as CBN Governor

President Muhammadu Buhari has forwarded the name of Godwin Emefiele to the National Assembly for reappointment as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) President Buhari on Thursday forwarded the name in a letter, expected to be read on the floor of the Senate.

Godwin Emefiele who is the 11th CBN Governor began his five-year tenure on June 3, 2014, which will come to an end in less than a month.

Emefiele became the governor at a time when there was visible pressure on the Naira as well as a decline in the country’s foreign reserves.

At his maiden news conference as governor, he harped on the vision of building a people-focused central bank that would deliver effective price and financial system stability as well as promote sustainable economic development.

Over the course of five years, Emefiele introduced policies which many economic experts have criticised, while many others hailed the policies.

Some of the major policies undertaken by the apex bank in the last five years include the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) which aims at increasing the country’s local food production and conserving the foreign reserves.

The CBN took the decision to also ban 41 items from accessing foreign exchange through official routes to encourage local production of the items and simultaneously conserve the nation’s depleting foreign reserves.

Since then, the CBN has raised the number of items affected on the list to 43, with the inclusion of fertiliser and textile products.

Some of the items not valid for foreign exchange at the Nigerian window include rice, cement, margarine, palm produce, beef, vegetables, poultry and eggs, private airplanes, wooden doors and Iron rods, among others.

The CBN also introduced the multiple foreign exchange system, which led to the creation of the Inter-bank/Wholesale, Invisible, Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the Investors/Exporters’ windows.

Also, in 2018, the CBN signed a bilateral currency swap agreement with the People’s Republic of China worth about 2.5 billion dollars.

The Currency Swap Agreement is designed to aid trade transactions between China and Nigeria and remove the need to first source for U.S. Dollars before payments for transactions involving the two countries.

The CBN through the Banker’ Committee and in collaboration with all banks in Nigeria also inaugurated a centralised biometric identification system for the banking industry tagged: “Bank Verification Number (BVN)”.

Credit: NAN