The
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has reacted to allegations of corruption
levelled against it by Nigerian Wailers, saying that the Wailers are
paid agents and would fail in their bid to distract the government from
its focus.
The
Acting Director of Corporate Communications, Mr. Isaac Okorafor reacted
to the allegation in a conversation with the Economic Confidential.
The
Nigerian Wailers had, in a statement, alleged wide-spread corruption in
the administration of foreign exchange and illegally lending money to
President Buhari’s administration to support the budget.
The
CBN spokesperson said “The allegations are totally false and
fabricated. Such a thing is not possible under the new forex system. It
is not enough to make wild allegations. Those who are paid agents of
selfish interests and the enemies of the Nigerian economy 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
and crude oil dependency.”
Mr.
Okorafor said “No amount of blackmail will make the CBN allow a
practice where by 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”. What these
charlatans and hirelings want are basically twofold. First they want the
CBN to give out the nation’s scarce foreign exchange to their sponsors
to import all manner of foreign goods and dump them on our markets
thereby frustrating the good work our own farmers and manufacturers.
“Secondly,
they want the CBN to fold its arms and allow currency speculators to
drive the naira down to a level at which it will be easy for their
paymasters to buy up and take control of the Nigerian economy. They have
even gone to the extent of making false allegations that some banks are
having trouble just to trigger panic in the financial system. These
will not happen. Nigerians have rejected these foreign agents. 26 states
have adopted the CBN Anchor Borrowers Progrmme (ABP). Nigeria is set to
be self-sufficient in rice, fish and wheat production. What happened
during the past Christmas and new year celebrations has proved this. 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 local manufacturing. It will be dangerous
to our poor people in the rural areas and indeed to masses of Nigerian
workers who are on fixed incomes for the CBN to allow speculators to
drive the value of the naira to any level just for the selfish gains of
the sponsors of these arrangee protests. We will not succumb to
blackmail.
“Again, the issue of the CBN funding
the Federal Government budget has been long addressed with clear figures
which have been widely publicized. Let me once again state that the
role of the CBN as banker to the Federal Government is to do exactly
what we have done and within the limits specified by law.
“Or would the so called group want the CBN to withhold advances so that the government will collapse?” he concluded.
But
in a statement from the Nigerian Wailers signed by its Deputy National
Publicity Secretary, Mr Fasipe Oluyemi, the group has called on the
good people of Nigeria to come out en mass for a protest (#OccupyCBN) to
stop this impunity of the Fraudulent Forex Trading, Round Tripping and
racketeering going on in the Central Bank of Nigeria aided by its
Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele and bring to an end the Manipulation of
Forex, illegally funding Federal Government budget, short-changing the
Money Deposit Bank's reserve ratio at the expense of the Masses as the
abuse of internal process.
The group recalls
that the apex bank's top management carried out a backdoor recruitment
exercise for the children of high profile Nigerian politicians, business
men, in which the door was shut against the children of average
Nigerian who may have been qualified to work in the bank on merit basis
and were not allowed, but, the employment was freely handed to the
children of friends and families of those in Government.
“Since
the emergence of the administration of President Buhari, Forex Trading
has been illegally turned to an exclusive business of the friends and
family of those in power as against the principle of banking which
allows for professionalism in trading and ensuring circulation to the
business community for import and export of goods and services that will
have direct positive impact on the economy and the people, the
statement said.
NOTE: Economic Confidential is a sister publication of PRNigeria
PRNigeria
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