Emefiele: 4 years of navigating Nigeria’s financial landscape

IT was 1,460 days on June 4, 2018 since Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele assumed office as the Governor of the nation’s apex bank. It was a time the nation was preparing for its 2015 general elections, with the attendant economic uncertainty, particularly as the financial sector was bedeviled by forex crisis. Not minding his 10-point agenda to reposition and put the economy on a path of sustainable growth, quite a number of global exogenous factors also exposed the vulnerability of the Nigerian economy. Consequently, Nigeria’s gross domestic product declined, which culminated in recession in 2016. Inflation was almost 19 per cent and the Naira exchanged for N525/$1 as at March 2017.

The economy at the time was challenged by the continued down slide in the international price of crude oil, Nigeria’s major revenue earner, snowballing into foreign exchange crisis. No excuse to the enterprise of currency speculators, bettors and their accomplices (local and foreign), who waged unrelenting war against the Naira. The foreign reserve was at its lowest ebb and the economy was in topsy-turvy.

And just like the former military President, General Ibrahim Babangida said during his reign that Nigeria economy defied all economic theories, Godwin Emefiele may wished he was not picked for the job at the time. He was vilified and harassed, yet remained firm and dogged.

Assessing his four years in office, one will not be wrong calling him a ‘steel made’ man, who was able to weather the storm. And today, Emefiele can be adjudged to have managed the economy well.

Giving insight into what would be his mission at the apex bank, he came up with a 10-point programme to spend his energy and resources to build a resilient financial system that would serve the growth and development needs of the people using development bank strategies as the fulcrum of his policy to drive the economy.

Not only that, Emefiele committed himself to creating ‘a central bank that is professional, apolitical, and people focused.’ This mission may have been propelled by his determination to bequeath a sound economy to Nigerians. This conclusion became apt because Emefiele did not only inherit a battered economy that was stagnated, but one with high interest rate, high unemployment rate and negative growth.

Determined to leave a mark, he redesigned the bank’s monetary policy architecture to suit the needs of the economy. He modified the Agriculture Credit Guarantee Scheme (ACGS), Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS), the N220 billion Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund (MSMEDF), Small and Medium Enterprise Credit Guarantee Scheme (SMECGS) and created the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) among many other initiatives he enunciated.

Confronted by the volatility of oil prices and absence of economic diversification, he adopted a home-grown therapy leveraging on demand management strategy through restriction of forex to some 41 items that can be produced locally. This did not go unchallenged by vested interest groups culminating in JP Morgan delisting Nigeria from its Government Bond Index.  However, the decision had helped reduce drastically Nigeria’s import bills from an average of about $5.5 billion to  $1.9 billion by mid-2017.

Also in June  2016, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) came up with a new framework for foreign exchange, creating Financial Market Derivative Quotation (FMDQ), a platform through which exchange rate would be market driven to arrest the despicable enterprise of speculators.

With a programme to build a sound economy through the bank’s development finance initiatives, Emefiele intervened in critical sectors of the economy like power, aviation, agriculture. The Anchor Borrowers’ programme designed by the bank in conjunction with some State Governments in the Federation and some private sectors groups, has gulped about N55.52 billion as support to over 250, 000 small-holders farmers. This was aimed at providing them with prerequisite training, tools and funds at single digit interest rate to enable them improve on cultivation of rice, cassava, maize, cotton, wheat, palm oil and soya beans. In the past two years of the programme, it has created directly, about a million jobs and indirectly over 2, 600,000 jobs.

And to tap into the resourcefulness of the youths, the CBN Governor unveiled Youth Innovative Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YIEDP) in conjunction with some commercial banks.

Over a year ago, and precisely on April 21, 2017, the Investors and Exporters Window, code named I&E, was introduced to rein in forex crisis. It became an instant recipe for the troubled forex market and within few months of its operation attracted over $54 billion into the economy. The Window has enhanced transparency in the market and has helped to sustain forex availability to end users. More importantly, the Window restored investors’ confidence in the economy.

Emefiele’s strides include his strive to ensure improved access to credit to MSMEs. He worked with International Finance Corporation (IFC), an affiliate of the Bretton Wood Institution, the World Bank, to sponsor a bill on Collateral Registry. Today, the Secured Transactions in Movable Assets Act, also known as Collateral Registry and Credit Reporting Act are laws in the country, courtesy of the understanding of the National Assembly.

The PAVE (Produce, Add Value and Export) is an underlining philosophy of Emefiele, with the intent to urge Nigerians to ‘produce what we consume and consume what we produce’. In summary, the objective is directed at Nigerians to take their destiny of solving the macroeconomic challenges in their hands.

The CBN Governor may have been misunderstood in the early days of his regime at the bank. However, his strides, commitment and forward looking approach have endeared him to local and international investors. Even President Muhammadu Buhari recently and on different occasions alluded to the CBN governor’s effectiveness as the main reason why Emefiele has retained his office despite the fact that he was appointed by his predecessor.

He said he wanted him to help his administration revive the economy and put it on the path of sustainable growth.

Emefiele has also been honoured at home and abroad with awards acknowledging his patriotic and professional role in steering the affairs of the economy and helped to ease Nigeria out of economic recession with unconventional but innovative monetary management tools.

Samsudeen, is a post graduate student of the University of Maiduguri