Tinubu’s CBN reforms will close loopholes Emefiele exploited, says presidency

The presidency has said the ongoing reforms within the Central Bank of Nigeria were thought actions aimed at closing gaps which the former governor of the bank, Godwin Emefiele, exploited while in office.

This was made known by Ajuri Ngelale, the special adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, when he appeared on TVC’s Politics on Sunday.

Emefiele was suspended on June 9, 2023, by President Bola Tinubu due to an ongoing investigation of his office and the planned reforms in the economy’s financial sector.

One of the key reforms in the financial sector was the unification of the exchange rate, allowing the naira to float against other currencies. A move which has weakened the local currency by over 40 percent according to the Economic Intelligence Unit.

Meanwhile, the former CBN governor was later detained by the operatives of the Department of State Services after his Lagos residence was combed and bags of currency notes and documents were reportedly recovered in the process.

On July 30, 2023, the president appointed a special investigator to probe the apex Bank, Jim Obazee, the chief executive officer of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria.

The special investigator was tasked to investigate CBN and key government business entities, adding that the investigator would report directly to the president’s office.

However, in the months that followed, more shocking revelations surfaced, including the forging of the signature of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari and documents purportedly written by Boss Mustapha, the former secretary to the government of the federation, to induce the payment of $6.23m from the CBN.

“Moving forward, the kind of elite conspiracy we saw between CBN officials, high-ranking government officials and high-ranking members of the private sector, they’re not going to be able to conspire amongst themselves to find loopholes within the system because we have a president who is an auditor and accountant who will close those loopholes just the way he did in Lagos State many years ago.

“The President (Tinubu) has taken a comprehensive review of the organisational structures that led to Godwin Emefiele putting the nation in the position that it currently is.

“And he has said, even by legislation, that we are going to ensure that not only guardrails are put in place, but that legislative changes be enacted in such a way that this can never happen,” Ngelale stated .