President Bola Tinubu has appointed Jim Osayande Obazee, a former Chief Executive of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria to investigate the affairs of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other key government business entities. As part of his mandate, the Special Investigator is expected to provide a report on public wealth that is currently in the hands of individuals and establishments, as well as work with security and anti-corruption agencies to deliver on the assignment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will be\nrecalled that the immediate past CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele was suspended by\nthe President in June 2023. The CBN Deputy Governor (Operations), Folashodun\nShonubi has been managing the affairs of the Bank in acting capacity since\nthen. Emefiele was subsequently arrested and detained by the Department of\nState Services (DSS). To the utter dismay of Nigerians, he was charged to court\nfor offences bordering on illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, after\nthe DSS had made a show of attempting to arrest him in December 2022 on\nallegations of terrorism financing and other economic crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CBN naira\nredesign policy introduced by Emefiele in December 2022 as a measure to tackle\nvote buying, curb inflation and drive a cashless society, was poorly\nimplemented, occasioning a scarcity of the naira and attendant hardship on\nindividuals and businesses. Under\nEmefiele\u2019s leadership, the naira was devalued several times, and the multiple\nforeign exchange rates regime was sustained. This meant that while foreign\ncurrency was available to a select few and for specific purposes at the CBN\n\u2018official rate\u2019, the parallel market which had a higher supply of foreign\nexchange traded at a rate that was almost double the official rate. Soon after\nhis inauguration, President Tinubu discarded the multiple exchange regime,\nwhich he recently described as \u201ca highway of currency speculation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a meeting with\nthe World Bank President, Ajay Banga on Friday, August 4, President Tinubu also\nannounced that there will be a structural review of the civil service payroll,\nas part of efforts to block financial loopholes in public administration.\nAllegations of sharp practices and general lack of transparency within the\ncivil service payroll are no longer news, particularly the issue of \u2018ghost\nworkers.\u2019 In August 2022, the immediate past administration of President\nMuhammadu Buhari stated that it was reviewing the 2011 Oronsaye Report, with\nthe aim to effect fundamental changes to the structure of the civil service.\nHowever, after the presentation of a White Paper for the restructuring of\ngovernment establishments to the then Secretary to the Government of the\nFederation, Boss Mustapha, not much else was heard on the issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nigerians will be\nkeenly watching for the outcome of these measures announced by the Tinubu\nadministration with regard to the CBN and the civil service, with the hope that\nthey are not merely grand gestures by the new government. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Bola Tinubu has appointed Jim Osayande Obazee, a former Chief Executive of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria to investigate the affairs of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other key government business entities. As part of his mandate, the Special Investigator is expected to provide a report on public wealth that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3345,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339\/revisions\/3345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}