Chidi Samuel
The Central Bank of Nigeria has described as false and fabricated the allegations by a Civil Society Group, The Wailing Wailers, of sharp practices of Forex racketeering, manipulating Forex tradings and illegally funding Federal Government budget and short-changing the Money Deposit Bank’s reserve ratio at the expense of the Masses. Describing the wailers as paid agents, the Apex Bank explained that such practice was not possible under the new forex regime.
The Central Banks position was contained in a statement made available to Journalist by Mr Isaac Okoroafor, the Acting Director Corporate Communication.
According to him, ” Those are paid agents of selfish interests and enemies of the Nigerian economy and they will fail in their bid to distract the CBN and the Federal Government from their focus on the diversification of the Nigerian economy away from import dependency.”
The CBN acting Director reiterated that the Bank was focused on the task of rebuilding the economy and that no amount of blackmail from professional critics will deter the bank from focusing at the task before it and the country.
”No amount of blackmail will make the CBN allow a practice whereby our farmers and industrialists who have invested heavily and employed our youths in the production of Nigerian made rice, fish, industrial starch, palm produce, wheat, tooth pick, wines etc would be made to close their farms and factories again”, Mr Okoroafor stated.
Mr Okoroafor explained that the Wailers and their sponsors are pushing a two pronged agenda which include blackmailing the CBN to give out the nation’s scarce foreign exchange resources to their sponsors for importation of all manners of foreign goods and dump same in our markets to frustrate the good work of local entrepreneurs and secondly for the Apex Bank to fold its arms and allow currency speculators drive down the naira to the level at which it will be easy for their paymasters to buy up and take control of the country’s economy. This, he said, will not happen as Nigerians have already rejected them.
According to him, ”Nigerians have already rejected them. 26 states have already adopted the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme(ABP). Nigeria is set to be self sufficient in rice, fish and wheat production.., it will be economically suicidal for the CBN to allocate our scarce forex to those who will engage in another escapade in senseless importation which will again discourage our local producers who have borrowed money to engage in agriculture and manufacturing.”
On the issue of CBN funding for the Federal Government Budget, Mr Okoroafor explained that issue has long been addressed with clear figures but went ahead to state that the role of the CBN as Banker to the Federal Government is to do exactly what the bank did within the limits specified by law.