THE Senate has confirmed the nomination of Olayemi Cardoso as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The Senate also confirmed four others as the Bank’s Deputy Governor.

They are Emem Usoro, Muhammad Dattijo, Philip Ikeazor and Bala Bello.

Cardoso and his deputies were confirmed in Abuja on Tuesday, September 26.

The confirmation marks the beginning of a new era at the apex bank after President Bola Tinubu suspended the Bank’s immediate past governor, Godwin Emefiele, who is facing a 20-count charge filed against him by the Federal government at the Federal High Court, Abuja.

Tinubu had on September 15 approved Cardoso’s nomination for five years at the first instance and the four deputy governors.

Cardoso and his team had formally assumed duty on Friday, September 22, in an acting capacity.

The team took over from Folashodun Shonubi, the Bank’s acting governor, and his team – Aishah Ahmad, Edward Lametek Adamu, and Kingsley Obiora, all deputy governors.

According to economic experts, the new board came when Nigeria faced several economic problems, from losing confidence in the foreign exchange market to defects in the entire financial system.

“There is a serious confidence crisis in the foreign exchange market fueling an unprecedented speculative onslaught on the naira,” a renowned economist, Muda Yusuf, said in a statement titled, ‘Ten Point Agenda for the CBN Governor.’

Yusuf, the chief executive officer of the Centre for the Promotion Of Private Enterprise (CPPE), pointed out that Nigeria’s economy grappled with severe adverse effects of depreciating exchange rates, soaring energy costs, ravaging inflationary pressures, a massive backlog of foreign exchange obligations that needed to be cleared and debt service obligations that needed to be redeemed.

“This is evidently an economic management quandary that the new economic team would have to manage, and urgently too. And the CBN has a key role to play in this,” he maintained.

Another leading Nigerian economist and chief executive of Economic Associates, Ayo Teriba, had told the Guardian that there was a challenging way out of the foreign exchange crisis and that it was partially the job of the CBN to stabilise the market.

The ICIR reports that the apex bank did not publish its financial statements for about seven years but had to do so in August 2023 because of an ongoing investigation into its financial management by Tinubu’s presidency.

Cardoso pledges to embrace a culture of compliance

An economic and development policy advisor, financial sector leader, former chairman of Citi Nigeria and Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget in Lagos, Cardoso has over three decades of managerial experience on board. 

He is an alumnus of Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom, where he studied managerial and administrative studies. 

He also holds a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, United States of America.

However, the new Central Bank’s chief and his committee of governors will have to face the seemingly tough job and daunting challenges, ranging from runway inflation, volatile exchange rate, contentious ways and means (W&M) advances, ambiguous external reserves, falling bank adequacy ratio, unaffordable cost of borrowing, touchy development financing and sundry other issues.

At their screening at the Senate chamber on Tuesday, the CBN chiefs highlighted a few of the priority issues. 

These include returning the apex bank to its core mandate set up in the CBN Act, depoliticising the CBN, transparently ensuring effective communication and feedback, working with evidence-based data to stimulate the economy, and strengthening collaboration between the fiscal and monetary authorities.

However, they noted that the job before them would be challenging but that they were determined to work with the National Assembly.

Cardoso stressed that his team would work and not run afoul of the extant laws guiding their operations and pledged to embrace a “culture of compliance” at the CBN.

The Senate, however, charged its committee on banking, insurance and other financial institutions to rise to the occasion to monitor the activities of the CBN.

Federal government reviews investigator’s interim report

Meanwhile, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, on Monday, September 25, disclosed that the Federal government would soon unveil the audit report of the CBN probe.

President Tinubu had, on July 28, 2023, appointed a former chief executive officer of the Financial Reporting Council (FRN) of Nigeria, Jim Obazee, as the special investigator for the apex bank.

The special investigator was to probe the CBN and key government business entities and report directly to the President’s office.

Akume, who fielded questions from pressmen in Abuja on the 63rd Independence anniversary of Nigeria, however, said the Bank’s probe report, when made public, would reveal how poor governance brought the country to its present predicaments.

He said the report would let Nigerians know what went wrong and how the country got to its present mess.

Obazee had submitted the interim report to the President’s office over a week ago for necessary action to be taken by the President, the Punch reported.

The preliminary report will give the President an idea of the rot discovered so far as the investigation continues.