When the story of these perilous times comes to be written, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin “Mefi” Emefiele, is sure to emerge as one of the most execrable figures of the era.
I date this evaluation from the moment he allowed himself to be recruited by the resident Svengali in the Aso Rock Villa into the race for the presidential ticket of the ruling APC, the party of President Muhammadu Buhari.
It was not his idea. If he had any political ambition, he had kept it a secret hitherto. He did not strike you as the type who would want to launch a political career starting as the country’s president. Nothing about him was indicative of overweening conceit or ambition, at last not from a distance.
But it says a great deal about Emefiele’s credulity and gullibility that he embraced it in double quick time. His first order of business after obtaining an APC membership card, was to flood the landscape with 500 branded cars to register his arrival on the political scene. Then he bought copious amounts of media space to advertise his mission and recruited elements of the Mobutist media to project him as the solution to the trouble with Nigeria
It seems not to have occurred to him that he could not enter party politics nor run for president while remaining custodian of the national monetary policy and czar of the banking system. He saw no conflict in playing those roles simultaneously.
Perhaps he did, but was assured by the Svengalis in the Villa that such considerations did not apply to him. Aren’t there always exceptions to every rule? And we are here dealing not even with any iron-clad rule but a mere convention.
In whatever case, Emefiele’s presidential bid ended in a puff, well before it had gained traction. It will now go down as the briefest and least consequential foray into electoral politics ever made by a presidential aspirant.
In the perpetual jostling for advantage that occurs in every regime, Emefiele’s sponsors seemed, at least for a while, to have been out-muscled by a rival power bloc in the Villa, determined to clear any doubt as to who was in control.
They set in motion a machinery to have Emefiele prosecuted on charges of financing terrorism. Even by Nigeria’s standards, the move seemed exorbitant.
Emefilie fled precipitately, to parts unknown. And for several weeks, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, regulator of the economy that is the powerhouse of the Economic Community of West African States and home to one of the three largest economies in Africa, abandoned ship.
He was received back at Lagos airport by a phalanx of soldiers. Since then, they have kept him under armed protection.
Because the economy is judged far too important to be left to the winds of political partisanship and the whims of political meddlers, the autonomy of the Governor of the Central Bank is formally guaranteed in most countries. That autonomy is relative, to be sure, but the larger it is or perceived to be, the greater the respect the incumbent is accorded by his or her peers and the greater the confidence that flows from their decisions.
But, much more than his predecessors, Emefiele seems to be content to take his orders from Aso Rock. Every so often he is to be found there, more supplicant than sure-footed expert giving the authorities the benefit of his superior knowledge and wisdom.
Before Emefiele pulled out or was pulled out of the race for the presidential ticket, he had determined that the time had come to rein in the excess liquidity that was fueling inflation and making the electoral system a hostage to political actors for whom the surest path to power lies in massive vote-buying.
The stockpile they were counting on to buy the election had to be degraded by redesigning the banknotes in circulation, injecting them into the system, and allowing them to circulate side by side with the old notes, until January 31, when the old notes would cease to be legal tender.
This monumental shakeup was to occur within 100 days. Under no circumstance would the deadline be extended. At every opportunity, Emefiele reassured all those who expressed doubt about the feasibility of this compressed schedule that he and the CBN were up to the task.
That nation now knows at a frightful human and material cost that grows with each passing day that Emefiele was not being forthright. And even at his most indulgent, Buhari must now be wondering whether Emefiele was in earnest when he assured him that the National Mint had the capacity to produce the volume of new notes the overhaul would require.
According to the best authorities, it was based on that assurance that Buhari instructed Emefiele to have the National Mint print the new notes. No outsourcing. And that was how we arrived at this present disquiet where millions of our compatriots are reduced to wallowing in misery of near-Biblical dimensions.
In every clime, it is accepted, even if the tenet is not always woven into policy, that the welfare of the people is the supreme law. In Nigeria, the governing philosophy seems to be that wanton immiseration of the people is the supreme law.
Surely, a more humane way is possible?
Emefiele has stoutly denied telling the Council of State, trotted out to give Buhari covering fire, that the National Mint was well equipped to print the new bank notes. Emefiele has so many faces that it is hard to tell the one he is presenting at any given moment. Even, so, I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on that point.
But the capacity to produce the quantum of required bank notes is not the same thing as the capacity to deliver them within the timeframe Emefiele had stipulated for the changeover, plus the additional ten days he was forced by public indignation to concede.
He has neither produced nor delivered.
As we go back and forth, the question cries out insistently: To what purpose is the perfect calendar of woes which Emefiele has inflicted on Nigerians in the runup to the General Election? For whose benefit?
Cui bono?
The claim that it is designed to insulate the public from those scheming to rob them of their voices and their power by the wholesale purchase of their votes is implausible to the point of absurdity.
How, at any rate, can that objective be attained by making it well-nigh impossible for clients in good standing to draw on their bank deposits to meet their daily needs?
How, Mefi?
We must put the same question to the latter-day Arthur Nzeribe who sought an injunction restraining the authorities from extending the life of the old banknotes even if they so wished.
What is the busybody’s locus standi?
And to the latter-day Judge Bassey Ikpeme — she of the “Midnight Judgement – who more than enthusiastically embraced a petition rooted more in politics than law and upheld it when she should have declined jurisdiction.
Finally, the question must also to go the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), who has been carrying on the tradition of the holder of the same office and resident cardsharper in Babangida’s military presidency, the late Clement Akpamgbo, SAN.
Give Kano State Governor Dr Abdullahi Ganduje full marks for “connecting the dots,” pardon the cliché. Anti-June 12 elements have regrouped big time.
The public ignores them at its peril.
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