President Bola Tinubu promised on Sunday to expose the rot in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), calling the apex bank a nest of corruption under his predecessor, former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari, who is Tinubu’s ally and party member, was president from May 28, 2015 to May 29, 2023, with Godwin Emefiele as his Central Bank governor.
“I pledged a thorough housecleaning of the den of malfeasance the CBN had become. That housecleaning is well underway,” Mr Tinubu said.
Mr Tinubu declared in his Independence Day speech that the apex bank’s leadership has been reconstituted and that he would make public his findings on the rot in the CBN.
“A new leadership for the Central Bank has been constituted. Also, my special investigator will soon present his findings on past lapses and how to prevent similar reoccurrences,” Mr Tinubu said.
The president’s remarks came months after he sacked Mr Emefiele in June and ordered an investigation into the deposed CBN governor’s leadership.
On June 9, just a few days after taking office, President Tinubu sacked Mr Emefiele and ordered an investigation into his term as CBN governor.
Mr Emefiele was detained for more than two months. He was, however, given bail after Mr Tinubu’s government was chastised for illegally detaining him without charging him in court.
Mr Tinubu claimed in a meeting with Nigerians in Diaspora just days after firing Mr Emefiele that the departed CBN governor oversaw a “rotten financial system” in which a few people made “bags of money.”
He said, “The financial system was rotten. Few people making bags of our money and then you yourself, you stopped sending money home to our poor parents. Several windows. But that is gone now, is gone.”
He added that “The man [Emefiele] is in the hands of authorities, something is being done about that, they will sort themselves out.”
Laolu Akande, a member of Mr Buhari’s regime and former vice president Yemi Osinbajo’s media adviser, admitted that Mr Emefiele advocated irresponsible theft of Nigeria’s wealth through the dual exchange rate.
“His shenanigans, the colossal damages he perpetrated at the CBN was to the utter detriment of the Nigerian people. This is not even about cashless policy, but apparent corruption, especially in the dual exchange rate policy, which never made sense. What a sigh of relief,” Mr Akande said.
