A bill to amend the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act, 2017 to Strengthen the Bank and for related matters, sponsored by Senator Darlington Nkwocha passed for Second Reading in the Senate on Wednesday, October 25. The bill introduces the office of a Chairman of the Board of the CBN with a five-year tenure, distinct from the office of the Governor of the Central Bank. It also increases the number of Deputy Governors of the CBN from four to five. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill amends section 6 of the principal Act to introduce a new membership\nfor the Board of the Central Bank to comprise a Chairman, the CBN Governor,\nfive Deputy Governors, Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance,\nfive non-Executive Directors and the Accountant General of the Federation. It\nprovides that each of the Deputy Governors shall be appointed from a region\nother than the region the CBN Governor comes from. The amendment to section 6\nalso introduces a provision that the CBN shall have an Internal Audit\nDepartment that submits reports and makes recommendations to the Board. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill amends section 8 of the CBN Act to state that the Chairman of\nthe CBN shall be appointed by the President and that neither the Chairman,\nGovernor nor Deputy Governors can engage in or be members of any political\nparty until three years after their disengagement from office. The amendment also makes the Board rather than the CBN\nGovernor responsible for keeping the President informed on the affairs of the\nBank, including providing reports on the Central Bank\u2019s Budget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The amendment to section 12 of the CBN Act confers power on the Chairman\nof the Board to appoint two members of the Board of Directors to the CBN\u2019s\nMonetary Policy Committee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In section 8 of the First Schedule to the principal Act, the bill gives\nthe Chairman a special responsibility alongside the Governor and Deputy\nGovernor for the organisation and management of the Bank, overseeing records of\ntransactions by the Bank, safekeeping of its assets and the discharge of duties\nby employees of the Bank. The power of the Governor to define the responsibilities\nof each of the Deputy Governors and delegate his duties to them is subject to\nconsultation with and approval of the Chairman of the Board. Also, the\nGovernor\u2019s power to assign or re-assign\nthe Deputy Governors is subject to consultation with and approval of the\nChairman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It appears that this amendment seeks to introduce greater checks in the\nleadership of the CBN by separating the Chairman of the Board from the CBN\nGovernor and subjecting the exercise of some of the powers of the CBN Governor to\napproval by the Chairman. Also, the amendment seeks to insulate the leadership of\nthe CBN from partisan politics by prohibiting the Chairman, Governor and Deputy\nGovernors of the Bank from being members political parties of or engaging in\npolitical party activities for the duration of their tenure and even up until\nthree years after that. This is ostensibly to avoid a reoccurrence of the\ncontroversy that unfolded ahead of the 2023 general elections, in which the\nimmediate past CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele emerged as a presidential aspirant\nunder the All Progressives Congress. A development that was met with\ndisapproval by the generality of Nigerians and adjudged unethical. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill to amend the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act, 2017 to Strengthen the Bank and for related matters, sponsored by Senator Darlington Nkwocha passed for Second Reading in the Senate on Wednesday, October 25. The bill introduces the office of a Chairman of the Board of the CBN with a five-year tenure, distinct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3436","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\/3436","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=3436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3443,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3436\/revisions\/3443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}