Our Government and Organised Labour are once again for the umpteenth time in about five years embroiled in what may best be described as an unending petrol price control war, which was ignited over two decades ago with the drastic devaluation of the naira and increasing product prices.

I will begin this week’s article with a reference and excerpt from veteran journalist, Bisi Lawrence’s piece titled “Oh to spray again” in Saturday Vanguard edition of 10/10/09.

In last week’s article, “Dollar Reserves: Who Owns What?” we endeavoured to lift the shroud over the amorphous concept of Nigeria’s foreign reserves. Incidentally, the Senate has lately in consonance with our position, also frowned at the illegality of the component of the reserves defined as excess crude account! (See Daily Independent headline of 23/10/2009, “Sharing of $2bn Excess Crude Fund Illegal – Senate”).

At the peak of the crude oil price boom in 2007, this commodity sold for as high as $150/barrel on the international market and Nigeria fortuitously garnered her highest ever external reserves of over $60bn. This figure would have exceeded $72bn, but for the ‘illegal’ withdrawal of about $13bn to exit the controversial Paris and London Club debts just over three years ago!

By Les Leba
The question on the lips of all concerned Nigerians lately is whether or not the abysmal decline in our economy can be arrested by the measures currently adopted by our Central Bank. My usual response to this question is that you cannot sow rice and hope to reap cassava (a la Majek [...]

This week, we will conclude the series of articles on “The Putrid Mess Also in CBN!” with an examination of the misguided application of the Central Bank’s instruments of control, and wonder why these wrongheaded policy measures were not subjected to the simple test of whether or not they were in conformity with commonsense!

The object of the earlier articles in this series is to show that the Central Bank’s (CBN) condemnation and indictment of banks is as hypocritical as the proverbial ‘pot calling the kettle black’! Indeed, the CBN’s posturing assumes an immoral colouration, because in reality, the malaise in the banks was actually instigated by the failure of the apex bank to effectively perform its secondary role as the official regulator and supervisor of the money market.

By Les Leba
Most of our people would recognize the role of commercial banks as custodians of our savings, but probably much less are in reality acquainted with the role of banks as lenders to individuals as well as corporations.
This is not surprising as possibly less than 10% of our estimated population of 150m are engaged [...]

Media reports indicated that such auditors were indeed deployed to the banks late in 2008, shortly before expiration of Soludo’s five-year term; however, it would seem that these auditors failed woefully in alerting the nation of the inebriate state of the banks! Indeed, possibly based on the incorrect reports filed back, or in spite of the ugly reality, the former CBN Governor boasted that Nigerian banks were stronger than ever and could readily support the government if the effects of the global recession approached our shores!

The object of this column in the last two weeks has been to debunk any insinuation that Central Bank of Nigeria, the government’s agency for regulating and supervising the banking sector, and the EFCC, Nigeria’s financial crimes fighters did not know of the rot in our nation’s financial markets!