New Naira Policy: Yar’ Adua’s Ingenuities and Deceptions!

Josiah Ogege-Abedi

During the electioneering campaign, candidate Mallam Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua of the PDP promised many times without number to uphold the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, defend Nigeria’s national interest, treat every Nigerian citizen equally and fairly irrespective of religion, ethnic origin or tribe. And not only that, as he crisscrossed the length and breadth of the country in company of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, he promised heaven on earth how he will continue and uphold all the economic reforms his predecessor had put in place.

At some campaign stops, he assured his audience how he would keep some of Obasanjo hired technocrats and appointed professionals like Nuhu Ribadu, Dora Akiyuli, and Charles Soludo, to name but a few. In short, the promise was to keep the Obasanjo Economic Management Team intact having done a fabulous job when the team worked so hard and repositioned the Nigerian dilapidated economy on the path to a sustainable economic-growth with time. Many Nigerians were happy to hear all these niceties from candidate Yar’ Adua since the lack of continuity has been the bane of Nigeria’s economic growth and development.

While it may be quite early to give post mortem on the performance of President Musa Yar’ Adua and his new led government, it is very necessary for concerned citizens of Nigeria to comment or express their concerns on the inconsistencies and deceptions that have characterized the style of leadership and possibly, the “Northern Agenda” Yar’ Adua is beginning to foist on Nigeria, barely three months since he assumed the presidency of Nigeria.

Ever since May 29^th, 2007, that the Yar’ Adua led administration took over the reigns of power in Nigeria, the onslaught has been slash and burn on the past administration’s economic policies and the reforms as a package altogether. There’s nothing wrong for a newly formed government that has the peoples’ mandate to revisit, rectify, and fix bad past policies of previous administrations, but there’s a grave danger when that government has no defined manifestoes, clear-cut economic plank or economic blueprint or, an articulated sense of direction for the nation to follow through.

Recently President Yar’ Adua opened the Pandora box in a media chat, and ever before then, Nigerians have waited patiently to hear from the architect or sponsor (s) of the suspension order slammed on the new naira policy before assessment or judgment can be passed by Nigerians on the suspension order. Now we know it was outright cancellation of the new naira policy by Yar’ Adua and his newly assembled government. According to the Sunday Vanguard Newspaper that was published on September 2^nd, 2007, in it’s front page was the caption: ‘Why FG dropped new naira policy-Yar’ Adua’. The President, Mallam Umaru Yar’ Adua, reportedly gave reasons for the cancellation of the CBN’s announced ‘Strategic Agenda for the Naira’. In that news report, Mr. President said, “After the CBN briefing, the Executive council came to the conclusion that, all the countries where the re-denomination policy was adopted were countries facing hyper inflation”. The President went further when he said, “the Nigerian economy has been stable in the last five years with a stable exchange rate, a near single digit inflation and interest rate, and adopting the re-domination of the naira policy would have amounted to applying surgery on a patient that’s not sick ”, unquote. Good tidings Nigerians now have a president with sound economic background, and that’s is a plus!

From the above statements credited to Mr. President, one can decode the following messages from Yar’ Adua’s understanding and interpretation of the new naira policy:

I. President Yar’ Adua’s statements have impeached the loquacious and busy-body Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa accusation that, the CBN Governor, Professor Charles Soludo, violated section 19 (sub-section1 & 2) of the CBN Act of 2007, just because Soludo did not obtain or extract “written permission” from Mr. President before he announced to the nation the CBN’s new naira policy.

II. Despite all insinuations and the clandestine attempts to rubbish Professor Soludo and the CBN that Mr. President was kept incommunicado of the new naira policy whereas the CBN Governor was actually summoned to brief the Federal Executive Council. President Yar’ Adua has put all that to rest with the statements credited to him above.

III. Mr. President himself is an economist, and as such, it is needless for the FEC and the President’s newly assembled Economic Management Team to embark on any studies to ascertain the workability, implementation, and the success of the CBN new naira policy- the Strategic Agenda for the Naira.

IV. The Federal Government out rightly canceled with fiat, the CBN’s new naira policy, and not the mere suspension order that Nigerians were made to believe by the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, at the behest of President Yar’ Adua himself.

V. President Yar’ Adua is not his own man; powerful external forces, ostensibly from the North are out to tele-guide and control his presidency and policies to the detriment of Nigeria as a whole.

The Yar’ Adua Northern Agenda:

There’s nothing wrong to propagate or champion a “Northern Agenda” by a “northern government in power” in Nigeria, so long as the North and such government can come up with the resources within the geographical expression called North and sustain such an Agenda. The much taunted Northern Agenda by politicians of northern extraction ever since the emergence of the Yar’ Adua-northern dominated government is this:

a) The policies of the last Obasanjo led government perceived anti North, no matter their merits to national interest, such policies must be immediately reversed or discarded by President Yar’ Adua.

b) All political appointees, technocrats and professionals that served in the last Obasanjo government, no matter how qualified, but provided they formulated policies that never favored the North whereas such policies were in the direct best interest of Nigeria, proponents of such policies mustn’t be retained by the Yar’ Adua led new government.

c) Before Obasanjo second coming in 1999, Nigeria had a quasi-Northern Muslims dominated Armed Forces, but by May 29^th, 2007, there was a reformed Armed Forces that has National Defense Force semblance that’s ethnic-balanced and religion-blind that befits a country like Nigeria due to its mixture, this was all achieved with the help of a Northern retired former Chief of Army Staff, General T.Y. Danjuma, as Minister of Defense under the defunct Obasanjo administration. This core-North wants their son, President Yar’ Adua reversed immediately, but it is a tall order since all stakeholders are watching.

d) The CBN Governor, Professor Soludo, is perceived by the North as the architect and brain behind the removal of the Ajami or Arabic literature from the naira, and as such, he’s anti North. Anything to do with a CBN led Soludo must be vigorously rejected by a “northern government in power”. The North has always maintained that the last re-capitalization exercise embarked upon by the CBN and the Federal Government under Obasanjo that re-overhauled the Banking Sector is believed in the core-North as OBJ’s pet-project used to further diminish the power and influence of one time “monolithic north”. And to this end, the exercise consumed Bank of the North.

e) All Federal Government strategic appointments/offices: President and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, Defense Minister, Finance Minister, Secretary to the Federal Government, FCDA Chairman, National Security Advisor, Senate President, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, Special Adviser to Mr. President on Petroleum, Ambassadors to rich and influential Western nations, but to name a few, the North must take over in the drive to Northernized Nigeria. Presently, Northerners occupy the aforementioned offices in the Yar’ Adua led government.

f) As far as the North is concerned, Soludo was the instrument used by Obasanjo to do his dirty job in the CBN. The CBN’s naira re-denomination policy was primarily designed in cahoots with Obasanjo before he left office to wipe out the Northern dominated foreign currency black market. To the North, what will be the future of the foreign currency urchins on the streets of the North and Nigerian streets at large, most especially, now that it lost out from the Obasanjo privatization scheme that was encapsulated in his so-called economic recovery?

Now, the illogical argument of due-process and rule-of-law the Federal Government has cleverly used to cancel the CBN’s new naira policy plan is this, Mr. President was in fact briefed of the CBN plan, but Professor Soludo did not extract written permission from Mr. President before unveiling the new naira policy. However, these arguments are merely semantic; the cancellation of the new naira policy is vague and baseless. The Federal Government has no salient reason or strong defense for the position it had taken while canceling the new naira policy because it has failed to put forward an alternative plan or, it has not convinced Nigerians on its position so far.

Nevertheless, let’s concede the argument to the Federal Government that the CBN Governor, Professor Soludo, made procedural mistake (s) for not obtaining written permission from Mr. President before he went public with the CBN’s much publicized “Strategic Agenda for the Naira”, but can that alone be enough reason for the policy to be canceled without wide consultation with stake-holders or, a debate at least? Nigerians ought to be given the opportunity to compare notes, and shouldn’t we?

By the way who’s afraid of the new naira regime?

Definitely, the Yar’ Adua people have some heavy lifting to do convincing Nigerians on their position because their logic is a hard sell on this issue. The debate will not go away since the sudden cancellation smells to high heavens that the administration is either afraid of the new naira policy or the administration is bowing to powerful Northern interests or it has something to hide altogether. Why? Because of the following reasons:

i. There’s no iota of truth in President Yar’ Adua’s logic that “due process and rule of law” were not followed by the CBN. The Federal Government at one time hinged its cancellation order on the premise of “written permission” that was not obtained from Mr. President before the CBN went public.

ii. The Yar’ Adua people have said the CBN Governor did not consult with Mr. President before going public. As a scholar and professional, the CBN Governor, Professor Soludo, will not do anything as crass to that level.

iii. From what we know now, someone in the presidency is economic with the truth that Mr. President was not aware of the CBN’s “Strategic Agenda for the Naira”. Perhaps President Yar’ Adua himself is out to play dirty-trick politics with Nigerians on the new naira policy.

Moreover, in the most recent past, the current Finance Minister, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, who’s from Kano State, had been Soludo’s deputy at the CBN. He was privy to all board policies and decisions of the CBN concerning the new naira policy before he was appointed minister in the new Yar’ Adua led government. Dr. Usman’s past portfolio at the CBN as Deputy-Governor had kept him abreast of the ill-fated CBN’s re-denomination policy. The ‘ts’ and ‘dots’ of the “Strategic Agenda for the Naira” were crossed and dotted in his watch at the CBN. And co-incidentally, Dr. Usman happened to be a member of the newly assembled Yar’ Adua Economic Management Team alongside Soludo, but how come the buzz that Mr. President had been kept incommunicado of the CBN’s new naira re-denomination policy?

Meanwhile, Dr. Usman had told the nation in a press conference that the CBN proposal was within the purview of the laws of the CBN when he said, “Its their prerogative to take decisions on these issues. So what the CBN Governor came to do today was to basically brief the FEC on this policy”. That was supposed to be in tandem with the apex bank’s new autonomy status desecrated by Military Juntas in the bad days in Nigeria. During that era of Military Regimes, the CBN became a mere extension of the Presidency, leading to massive looting of the treasury. But didn’t the Finance Minister as Mr. President’s kitchen-cabinet member give a first-hand briefing at the presidency? And what lead to the impromptu expulsion of Soludo and Ribadu from the Yar’ Adua’s newly assembled Economic Management Team? They really want to fool Nigerians, aren’t they?

Now that the Federal Government has out rightly canceled the new naira policy with fiat, where does Nigeria go from here, and what’s the President’s alternative plan for the naira? The President and his Economic Management Team must have had a better plan for the naira before they hastily canceled the CBN announced plan. Whether President Yar’ Adua wants to keep the CBN’s plan in life-support so that he can just pull the plug on it at any time or he wants the plan in hospice to die a natural death nobody knows. These are the questions the Yar’ Adua people must address before Nigeria.

What has been very startling since May 29, 2007, is this: we are in the era of technological breakthrough and Globalism, and this is the year 2007, and there’s a new administration in Nigeria that boasts of a President with Master’s degree in Chemistry, and Vice-President with PhD, yet such a highly-octane administration would knowingly set the nation’s economic development clock backward by throwing Nigeria back to the Stone Age? Nigerians should be ready for a long haul under the Yar’ Adua/Jonathan led government. Why? Because in the past, we have always thought the past bad policies and missteps by the political-class were direct results of semi-illiterates that once occupied the nation’s presidency, but today, we are beginning to see a different reality on the ground.

Ironically, this is the first time since Independence that presidents with university degrees have ever governed Nigeria. President Yar’ Adua and Vice-President Jonathan should have allowed the national debate on the new naira policy as announced by the CBN to continue so that every Nigerian should be able to weigh-in on the merits and demerits of the policy before the Federal Government could can take a position or pull the plug on the debate. And this would have been very intelligent of the two leaders. The public would have judged their leadership skills quite differently from what it is now because allowing the debate to continue could have raised their political stocks, and at the same time, give the new government some cover of legitimacy and credibility. The Yar’ Adua led government has been craving for credibility and recognition right from electioneering campaign hence its futile attempts to form a “government of national unity” and “reaching out to the opposition” at all cost. Their handlers should have known better.

The CBN and Politics

The CBN and its board of governors should have known that monetary or fiscal policy alone couldn’t drive the nation’s economy and the naira. With autonomy or without, the CBN can neither oversee the Federal Government nor appoint (elect) the Executive President of Nigeria, but it is the other way round. However, the bold-plan the board had proposed and put forward before Nigeria is a radical one that jolted the foundation of the nation, its implementation would have been colossal in cost: good or bad. However, the CBN and its board claimed the plan will reinforce public confidence in the naira, and at the same time, strengthen it over time, that’s, if, and only if, Nigeria is to come to par with the developed economies of the West by the target of 2020. But no matter how we trash-talk the CBN’s plan, it is a plan that was carefully brainstormed before it was unveiled.

Good as the new naira policy may look on paper, the CBN board of governors cannot convince cynics that its new naira policy never originated from the Obasanjo Economic Recovery Agenda or Blueprint. But the argument the presidency had put forward that the CBN can only exercise monetary functions and not fiscal functions can only be discerned simplistic, and if not, a preemptive strike against the new naira regime and its proponents.

Realistically, no Nigerian seriously discusses the naira except it’s worthlessness or its use as a domestic medium of exchange, but today, the discussion amongst Nigerians from all shades of life is the naira. At least for one moment, the US Dollar, the British Pound Sterling, and the Euro did take the back seat in our national discuss, and who would say the new naira policy provoked debate is a mere smokescreen? Modern economic warfare is primarily waged on psychology, technology, and sometimes propelled by market forces by most Western nations. However, the CBN has successfully changed our national psyche on the naira as the nation’s official currency. We must pride and appreciate our naira first before we can device strategies to actualize a sustainable economic-growth to shore up the naira value with time.

The FG attack on Soludo

The CBN through its Governor, Professor Soludo, had merely briefed the press on the new naira policy. A time frame was announced for the policy implementation, but within a few days interval, the nation’s Attorney- General & Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, rushed with supersonic speed to the presidency to check the veracity of the CBN Governor’s press release to the nation. In the hasty process, the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice humiliated and embarrassed President Yar’ Adua when he subjected him to the state of denial, “never at any time was written permission asked or sought from the president by the CBN to re-denominate the naira”.

Thereafter, the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, in a press conference announced in military fashion to the nation of the suspension of the new naira policy. As his announcement filtered in, most Nigerians and including this author had thought the CBN Governor must have breached some Criminal Codes of Nigeria, hence the Attorney-General use of citation liturgies in his press conference to confuse and mislead the public when he charged that, “The CBN Governor had violated section 19 (sub-section 1 & 2) of the CBN Act of 2007”, and, “I, as the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice of this nation, I went and asked the president if he had given written permission to the CBN Governor to carry out the announced re-denomination of the naira, and the president denied it”. But why must the Honorable Minister go this stretch to serve Mr. President? Possibly, President Yar’ Adua and his surrogates overnight worked the phones to some influential and power brokers in the North to evaluate the Soludo CBN’s announced new policy for the naira. Consequently, the new naira policy was discarded to the detriment of Nigeria without a healthy or robust debate.

The Presidency and damage control

The CBN on its part did not give any apologies to the presidency on its new naira policy that “due-process or rule-of-law” was not followed as alleged by the presidency. Rather the CBN through its Governor merely gave a press release reassuring the presidency and the nation that “it recognizes the powers of the President and Commander-In-Chief, Mallam Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, the sole power and authority to accept and approve any policies (monetary or fiscal) originating from the CBN to re-denominate the nation’s currency-the naira”. To the CBN, the presidency is all out to play politics and rubbish its plan to strengthen the naira, and as such, an apology is uncalled for.

While acting presidential to save face, President Yar’ Adua had to assure the nation in a press release that, he’s got no intention to fire the CBN Governor just because of some bureaucratic-snafu, and that, “he’s got absolute confidence in Professor Soludo to lead/steer the CBN”. Nevertheless, we must remind Mr. President that, in less than three months since Mr. Michael Aondoakaa came into his cabinet as minister, he has caused him two colossal policy reversals that are very embarrassing and quite avoidable:

i. The Attorney General & Minister of Justice’s abortive attempt to fork over the powers of the EFCC to the ever corrupt and rotten Justice Ministry. President Yar’ Adua had to personally intervene to safeguard the Nuhu Ribadu led EFCC’s independence from the Attorney General. That was raw power grab by Mr. Michael Aondoakaa to cripple the EFCC for personal and selfish reasons.

ii. Now it is the CBN’ s new policy for the naira. He has embarrassed and humiliated Mr. President publicly. He did not only stop there; he went further to disagree publicly with his counterpart at the nation’s Finance Ministry. Dr. Shamsudeen Usman should know better the CBN’s autonomy and monetary matters, and not Mr. Michael Aondoakaa.

iii. The Attorney General & Minister of Justice should be debriefed and told to clean up the endemic corruption at the Justice Ministry and revamp it as soon as possible. He should also be made to understand that civility is no sign of weakness from the Nigerian public he has been appointed to serve.

Summarily, it is very evident that anti-change elements are abounds in Nigeria to resist anything called change. Some of us that left Nigeria for the Diaspora nearly 30 years ago to seek greener pastures still wallop in the dream-world that, Nigeria has divorced its past for good, but we are deadly wrong. Nigeria’s political space is still very compressed with the do nothing old political apparatchiks that give no room to fresh ideas. Despite the present generational shift in the nation’s political leadership age group: running between ‘forties and fifties’, nothing much has changed. The rejection of Soludo’s new policy for the naira is a big lesson to Diaspora Nigerians. And if the CBN Governor, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, has any public-hygiene or dignity still left in him, he should simply resign or walk out on Yar’ Adua and his deceptive ilk now that the ovation is still loud. Why? Because they are going to either disgrace or force him out of the CBN at their time of choosing.

Lastly, for President Musa Umar Yar’ Adua, if he must succeed in the onerous task to build a developed, strong and virile nation to be called Modern-Nigeria, he must first jettison the “Northern Agenda”, that’s, if he has ever nursed any, and the “northern government in power” fantasy being expressed across the North. He has to seize the Nigeria- mainstream- politics as a centrist otherwise, ingenuities or deceptions cannot lead him and his government to any where in today Nigeria.

By Josiah Ogege-Abedi.

Treasurer & Community Leader,

The Urhobo Social Club of Massachusetts,

Boston, USA.

Josiah Ogege-Abedi is a Technologist & IT Consultant in The Greater Boston Region.