In the about 35 years I have functioned as a financial journalist in Nigeria, I have been privileged to have encountered nine Central Bank Governors and a few Deputy Governors who functioned as stop-gaps when there were vacuums. All these men were seriously considered as men of honour, for at least being selected for such an important function, for an economically fractured country like Nigeria. Each time their thought crosses my mind I stop to ponder their relevance at the time they lasted. It could be difficult calling out the best within the pack. But the fact remains that certain actions or inactions at every stage tend to remove the seeds from the chaff.
While working on their records it was obvious that the performance of every Central Bank Governor in Nigeria, and even across the world is directly related to the performance of the government he worked with. This happens to be the reason why governments and their institutions search for their best to occupy that very elevated position because it is seriously seen as the common denominator of the aggregate performance in leadership. It is monetary and fiscal policies that propel the entire development on which a government depends and immediately these policies are flawed everything crash.
The failure of every government starts from bad leadership, and it is bad leadership that begets bad appointments. Any bad leadership that appoints a poorly tutored Central Bank Governor is believed to have set up a song for its Nunc Dimitis. Most emerging economies and almost all the developing economies suffer this plague and that could be why poor development has become an issue that has remained largely unresolved, even when the Bretton Woods institutions have emptied their volts into the coffers of such recalcitrant nations.
In my own analogy, out of the nine governors I have followed closely, only four could be said to have made impacts that could be seen as part of the building block for national economic development and stability.
To a large extent, the office in Nigeria could largely be considered as work-in-progress based on the fact that the huge inconsistencies in government’s plans have not offered them the opportunity to develop a template that will drive a four year unbroken development strategy. Most of the time the capacities of the appointed are not able to direct the flow of government programmes as the case has been in many advanced countries, where institutions dictate the pace instead , of corrupt tendency to proclaim a fiat that has no basis of existence.
These are the guiding principles that make me to believe that Abdulkadir Ahmed, Joseph Sanusi, Chukwuma Soludo, and Godwin Emefiele are still tops. Each of them towed a line that gave something positive to the extent that those things contributed to the building blocks that are still going on and waiting for the mesaiah to come. While Ahmed had a block-buster administration that kept the value of the currency very strong as well as keeping the CBN Act in good check.
Joseph Sanusi moved for a Central Bank autonomy as basis for consistency. Chukwuma Soludo held on it and won the question of autonomy which empowered him to embark on the aggressive banking sector reforms, code-named Consolidation and a failed Naira Redenomination project while Emefiele emphasized the idea of using monetary policy tools to embellish fiscal policy demands to be able to postpone the doom called hunger and poverty which was starring every Nigerian in the face. That was the much needed economic intervention program.
The others left unmentioned were brave executives in their own rights but did not make the kind of mark that was supposed to take the Nigerian economy away from point A to B. They were just there, managing what they met on ground; whether they made any sense to the growth of the economy or not.
About seventeen months on the saddle, Yemi Cardoso may not be able to hit the apple chart, but has started to make the kind of moves that can take him away from the hoard of Central Bank Governors who came, saw nothing , and said nothing.
When it was time to tinker a CBN Governor for the Tinubu administration, Cardoso was not on the list of any of the economic apparatchiks that were referred to as windows to the new Nigerian economy. But Cardoso, as an experienced banker and a top player in the Tinubu Lagos cabinet and member of “the fabled team that built Lagos” as a new African economy cannot be sidelined as a non-performer. He may not have established that character in his current office at the CBN, but current developments indicate that he has initiated frantic moves that could be akin to directing government to the right route.
His position that the current problem in the Nigerian foreign exchange market is directly a consequence of the actions of governors and the Federal Government’s financial allocation misrule has been hailed as optimistic and patriotic as much as it is courageous.
What this position entails is that Cardoso may not be one of the members of the federal executives that will continue to dance to the tunes that brew economic misfortune for Nigeria. Much as his office is important to him and considering the nature of its political undertone, his actions in addressing the dictates in the Central Bank remain very much a huge worry.
His reactions to several inanities of governance at the last Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) were enough indications that he is committed to sound monetary and fiscal policy motives that could be good enough for the nascent economy.
In his explanations after the 297th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the Governor insisted that decisions of government which drive certain actions and inactions are reasons which the rates regime will always move in the negative direction with what happens in several other economies. He also noted that government’s fiscal policy actions are responsible for the discrepancies at the forex market, noting that the release of money to the State governments by the Federal Allocation Committee (FAC) defines the simple law of demand and supply. He said that there is a correlationship between the fall in Naira value at the Foreign Exchange Market and the release of huge amount of dollar by FAC.
He indirectly indicted the government on this and sues for a creative fiscal policy approach by the government so that the impact will not make nonsense of existing efforts and indication.
Cardoso’s reference to the FAC anomaly has been praised as it was a very bold spot to take the bull by the horn so that numerous distortions would not creep into the system . The reaction is believed to have drawn positive responses from experts who dubbed the outburst as fearless from the point of view that distortions would be minimised.
The Governor claimed that growing spate of confidence in the economy has started to be identified as critical indices have reported very significant growth that could be seen as clear pictures of the effects of structured applications of policies, innovative developments and new attitude to work as has been invoked by President Bola Tinubu.
According to Cardoso, developments in the fiscal policy realms have been identified as efficiently driving the possibility of reducing the country’s import duty bill between 10% and 15% annually, leading to a substantial crash. This is believed to have to potentially reduce forex demands and induce some substantial return to Small and MSME programme as initially agreed under the country’s development master plan. If he can mount on this platform to achieve all these, he may have written his name in gold.
But his constituency is in the minority….the truth sayers!!
