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| Mr. Godwin Emefiele |
The
North-South Economists’ Forum, NSEF, a focus group of development economists,
has warned propagandists and information hawkers feasting on a phoney ‘Emefiele
for President’ campaign not to drag the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, governor
into the murky water of partisan politics.
Recently, some online
news platforms flew a kite purporting that a group of top private sector
players and some sitting governors were working on a script to install Mr.
Godwin Emefiele as the next Nigerian president in the 2023 presidential
election. The report claimed that Emefiele may likely resign his appointment as
CBN governor this month to throw his hat into the Presidential ring.
But the CBN has stoutly
rebutted the story as disingenuously false, lacking in substance and therefore
a figment of the imagination of its purveyors.
CBN spokesman, Osita
Nwasinobi, described the report as a distraction from the CBN’s focus on its
mandate of minding monetary policies, financial stability and supporting
government programmes.
“I don’t know
where that platform got their news from. We discuss monetary policies at the
Central Bank and how to support the government, we don’t discuss politics. All
these distractions, they should leave us out of them so that we can do our
job,” Nwasinobi said.
However, the North-South
Economists’ Forum said having done its independent investigation and
consultations among highly placed Nigerian entrepreneurs some of whom were said
to be among those promoting the Emefiele for President movement, it has discovered
that the story was false in its entirety.
The body of Economists
in a statement on Wednesday signed by its Chairman, Malam Ahmed Abdulkadir and
Secretary, Dr. Chima Eboh, noted that “what was perceived to be a political
meeting promoting Emefiele Presidential ambition was actually a meeting of
governors, ex-governors, non-political actors, business people with proven
economic management background, civil society organisations and the media,
whose sole aim was to forge a new pathway for the growth and development of the
nation.
“Emefiele was not on the
agenda neither was he singled out for discussion at the meeting,” NSEF said.
The Economists urged the
CBN governor to stay focused on his economic reengineering of the nation’s
monetary policy framework to engender financial stability especially at these
times when the nation is facing grave economic challenges.
NSEF charged those
calling for Emefiele’s head and accusing him of playing partisan politics on
the basis of a fake news to desist from such ill-advised adventure, adding that
it ‘was childish and logically infantile to base their conclusion on a faulty
premise.
“We have watched how the
CBN under Emefiele has constricted the space for economic vampires who take
advantage of the nation’s weak primary sector to import all manner of
commodities into the country using forex sourced from CBN for local production
of goods only to divert same to importation of the same products they
originally claimed to manufacture in Nigeria.”
The group linked the
renewed attacks on Emefiele to the economic crooks whom he has through the CBN
policies of zero-forex for importation of commodities that can be easily grown
in Nigeria and dozens of economic interventions by the CBN. It urged Emefiele
not to be deterred by the headwinds created by this brood of economic saboteurs
who have found easy recruits in some faceless organisations.
“Dragging Emefiele into
politics is a show of aberrant mental indolence which does not advertise the
propagandists as intelligent or persons given to critical thinking. As a body
of Economists with strong bias for development, we consider it an effusion of
ingratitude to ever imagine or conjecture that CBN under Emefiele is favouring
one political party over another. That is the height of unreason,” the
statement said.
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