Buhari’s Order On Food Imports: Emefiele Defends CBN’s Independence

By Editor

Against the background of the presidential directive to deny foreign exchange to food importers, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN Mr. Godwin Emefiele has stoutly rejected the claim by some stakeholders that the directive was a violation of the independence of the apex bank.

Some economists and other stakeholders including the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP had flayed President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to the apex bank on the grounds that it was unwise and a violation of the expected independence of the apex bank.

Central Banks are expected to be independent of the government everywhere.

So, speaking at the commencement of the presidential retreat for ministers-designate, Mr. Emefiele flayed critics of the president even as he shrewdly put a face to the independence of the apex bank.

In a way that would not hurt the president or his critics, he said the directive to hurt allocation of foreign exchange to the importers of food was in line with a policy that the bank had commenced earlier.

Even more, he vowed that the directive would not just be directed towards foreign exchange from the CBN but that all banks would be made to deny foreign exchange to food importers.

He said:

 “If you recall, we started with about 41 items (food and non-food items), because we believe that those items can be produced in the country.

“As we stand today, there are about 43 items on that list and I will say substantially most of them are food items.

“We are basically saying if we have a food item that can be produced in the country, why should we waste scare foreign exchange importing those items into the country, when those can be produced in the country.

“It is important for me to say that the attempt to misrepresent the comments of Mr. President is very unfair and unfortunate.

“What we will say from the CBN is that Mr. President has made this comment purely to strengthen the position of the CBN to say that he believes in what the CBN has been doing since 2016 and there is need for us to reinforce that going forward.

“We would aggressively go more into the list of items that are being imported into the country, items that can be produced in Nigeria.

“I will like to stress that we would ensure that more of these items will get on the list of items that are going to be restricted from accessing foreign exchange in Nigerian banking industry not just from the CBN source.”

 “Today we are complaining that there is a high rate of unemployment, leading to some extent the level of insecurity in the country, why should we allow people to import food that can be produced in the country?

“We need to improve wealth in our rural communities and I am saying we will not change course, we will even be more aggressive on this programme.”

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