Yemie Adeoye

RECENT events in Nigeria has made it imperative for me to ponder and wonder on how Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, and largest crude oil producer, moved from Charles Soludo, Mohammed Lamido Sanusi to the current Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele.

I just wonder how we have decided to play with almost everything that can help our sorry lives. Especially the institutions that makes a nation.
Post office, Public Primary Schools, Primary Healthcare centers, Fire service stations, Police stations and barracks, libraries etc.

We killed them all by first appointing the most clueless on our clueless list of clueless people, those ones will develop policies that will gradually make the organizations or institutions irrelevant to the society, such that when it dies, no one will feel a thing.

We’ve done a good job of this to every thing that we once held as national pride, from Nigeria Airways to Festac town, Nitel to trade Fair complex and indeed the National stadium.

How does all these affect Emefiele and the current Naira redesign policy? Well…if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck..it is most definitely a duck!! Emefiele Godwin unlike his immediate two predecessors does not come across as smart or brilliant by any standard. Not his dressing, carriage, talking or even walking betrays anything slightly close to intelligence.

Now how such a fellow amidst 200 million people ended up in that most sensitive and important position is the reason for the aforelisted institutions and how they were brought to irrelevance and finally complete collapse.

I knew Mr. Emefiele was unintelligent and bereft of anything close to 21st century common sense when he challenged the DG of the DSS Mr. Yusuf Bichi to a fight, saying in a video that went viral “come out, let’s fight” and this statement was made during a supposed world press briefing on seemingly serious national issues, but of course we laughed it away, and the comedians, and skit makers smiled to the bank, as they developed that content for commercial use.

The next give away for Mr. Emefiele in my books, was when he went after Aboki FX, an online foreign exchange (forex) trading platform, accusing the platform of being the single major reason behind the high exchange rates and free fall of the Naira. That was such a shameful statement from the monetary policy custodian of our nation, and even elementary economics speaks otherwise, but here we are under the most clueless on our clueless list of clueless people.

Finally, as if struggling to convince right thinking Nigerians of how truly clueless and dumb he was, Godwin Emefiele, incumbent Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, suddenly declared via multiple proxies that he would be running for president in the forthcoming 2023 presidential election. It was then that I drew my conclusion that nothing surprisingly good or intelligent can emanate from this individual. He just does not have it, or cut it.

So now he has dragged us into what is clearly understandable only to only himself, President Buhari, and probably AGF Abubakar Malami alone, throwing the entire country into weeks of chaos and mayhem on the heels of a most sensitive and extremely crucial national elections.

Even if this policy is what Nigeria needs to become developed overnight, and eradicate corruption and poverty in a week, it is obviously glaring that it wasn’t well thought out, or even tested. It was just so frivolously done, that everyone is now wondering if someone with a functional brain actually conceptualized this policy, and how many testing stages it passed through before it was finally launched.

Sadly, we have built a system without institutions, and institutions are meant to stabilize situations when they get out of hand, but we have destroyed ours, especially the courts, hence the supreme court can give orders that the politicians will overlook or simply ignore, and nothing will happen. Isn’t that interesting?

We have ticked all the boxes that defines a failed nation, otherwise if the politicians were behind this policy, because they do not want a particular candidate to emerge President in the February elections, a solid institution (CBN) under a brilliant Governor would have objected, and pointed out to the politicians the dangers of such a decision at such a time. But never Emefiele, he simply does not have it or cut it.

It is interesting however, that in all these, Mr. Buhari whether knowingly or unknowingly seems to have concluded plans to end his 8-year rule, the same way he started it, on a frightening low.

Mr. Adeoye, Publisher and CEO, Biztellers.com.ng writes from Richmond Texas, USA