Abuja, Nigeria – The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has officially responded to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning‘s claim that she was not informed of the decision to redesign the naira notes.
Giving further reason why the decision was taken, CBN spokesman Osita Nwanisobi in a statement said: “Currency management in the country had faced several escalating challenges which threatened the integrity of the currency, the CBN, and the country”.The Minister Zainab Ahmad on Friday disowned the policy, stating she was not aware and warning the CBN of its dire consequences.But Nwanisobi reminded the Minister that “every top-rate Central Bank was committed to safeguarding the integrity of the local legal tender, the efficiency of its supply, as well as its efficacy in the conduct of monetary policy”.On the timing of the redesign project, Nwanisobi explained that the CBN had “tarried for too long considering that it had to wait 20 years to carry out a redesign, whereas the standard practice globally was for central banks to redesign, produce and circulate new local legal tender every five to eight years”.He urged all Nigerians to support the currency redesign project, stressing that “it was in the overall interest of Nigerians”.Nwanisobi stressed: “Some persons were hoarding significant sums of banknotes outside the vaults of commercial banks. This trend should not be encouraged by anyone who means well for the country”.The CBN spokesman assured Nigerians that “the currency redesign exercise was purely a central banking exercise and not targeted at any group”.Nwanisobi expressed optimism “the effort will, among other goals, deepen Nigeria’s push to entrench a cashless economy in the face of increased minting of the eNaira”.This, he said, is in addition “to helping to curb the incidents of terrorism and kidnapping due to access of persons to the large volume of money outside the banking system used as a source of funds for ransom payments”.He insisted the CBN in redesigning three series of the naira, “followed the law and due process to carry out the exercise, which is 12 years due”.According to Nwanisobi: “The CBN remains a very thorough institution that follows due process in its policy actions. The Management of the CBN, in line with provisions of section 2(b), section 18(a), and section 19(a)(b) of the CBN Act 2007, had duly sought and obtained the approval of President Muhammadu Buhari in writing to redesign, produce, release and circulate new series of N200, N500, and N1,000 banknotes.Also reacting to the Minister’s outburst at the National Assembly, Dr Boniface Chizea Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BIC Consultancy Services and one time contributor to CBN’s Quality Assurance FSS 2020 project said “the CBN has the sole authority to issue legal tender currency in Nigeria. The Bank alone is able to determine the quantum of currency to release as to align with other critical objectives particularly macroeconomic stability”.According to Dr. Chizea: “the CBN designs the face of the currency. This is one reason why the mint which prints currency is a department supervised by the Central Bank. I speak authoritatively here”!The CBN, he said, “does not report to the Minister of Finance even if one should have expected that she should have been taken on board. But remember that when you ventilate such policies there will be so many reasons to convince one not to go ahead.He stated “the rate of exchange will fall as we are now witnessing because the race to convert illegally held Naira has now commenced with this announcement. The challenge confronting the CBN now will be how to determine measures to counter the slide”.
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