- Emefiele Summons 15 Managing Directors of Banks To Ensure Smooth Implementation Process
As the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN’s policy continues to provoke reactions, President Muhammadu Buhari has insisted that the short and long term benefits of the Naira Swap are capable of tackling the perennial insecurity and corruption challenges that have brought Nigeria to her kneels.
A release by the President’s Senior Special Aid on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu which made this declaration yesterday, Thursday in Abuja, urged the Apex bank to adhere to the recommendation of the parliamentary committee in order to rectify identified problems.
Buhari who spoke at the State House when he played host to members of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on cashless policy and Naira Swap, said his speech earlier in the day was comprehensive enough as a response to the general outcry about the problems associated with the demonetisation policy.
He described the aim of the policy as “very good, security-wise” as seen from the lessening of kidnappings and associated corrupt practices. He, again, openly accused banks of being a clog in the wheels of progress
Earlier, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, as directed by the President, stated that the cashless policy was a global policy. “Nigeria must go cashless. It is a global policy, checking insecurity and fighting corruption,” he said.
He disclosed that senior officers of the CBN had all been sent out, complimented by “Super agents,” to take new currencies to unbanked rural populations. The CBN Governor expressed optimism that the current problems being entertained as a fall out of the introduction of the policy, which he described as “temporary,” would go away in no distant future.
Emefiele further disclosed that he had summoned no fewer than 15 Managing Directors, MDs of commercial banks earlier in the day in an effort to resolve the prevailing problems associated with the policy, adding that later in the evening, he will recall the bank Chiefs for their report.
He, however, assured Nigerians that “we are at the end of the problem.”
He also gave the promise that by the end of February, CBN will bring into circulation between N700-N800 billion, well in excess of what is needed to run the economy, stating emphatically that it is not possible to put back more than Three trillion Naira if the economy is to be healthy.
Emefiele, once again assured the politicians in particular and the Nigerian populace in general that accessing physical cash at the Bank will not be a problem to the general elections, as they will hold successfully.
The leader of the Parliamentary delegation, Alhassan Ado Doguwa, the House Majority Leader and Chairman of the Ad-Hoc Committee, said the meeting with the President was necessitated by the need to bring him up to date on the “problems of implementation and unintended consequences” of the new cash policy.
In acknowledging the far-reaching quality of the President’s broadcast to the nation earlier on Thursday, the House Leader said the Legislature and the government were on the same page in so far as the goals of the policy were concerned.
He added, however, that more needed to be done to remove the “hardship and inconveniences” that have attended its implementation.
