LAGOS—Civil Liberties Organization, CLO, yesterday supported the decision by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to stop the sale of foreign exchange, forex, to Bureaux de Change, BDCs, as part of measures to reduce the pressure on the nation’s foreign reserves.

President of the CLO, Comrade Igho Akeregha, who addressed a press briefing explained that the BDCs were being used to facilitate and ease corruption in Nigeria, especially as a potential vehicle for laundering the proceeds of corrupt funds into foreign currencies.

He argued that, “an economy that encourages a BDC operator to obtain publicly earned funds at N190/US$ and then turns around to sell it at N270/U$ is an economy that is determined to remain backward. This huge window creates a huge disincentive to seek other avenues for sourcing forex by the operators and allows them to make humongous profits at the expense of Nigeria and Nigerians”

Noting that the country has suffered adversely as a result of the unholy operations of the BDCs, Akeregha therefore demanded that the BDCs must be restructured and brought in line to International best practices.

He insisted that BDCs are not funded directly by the Government in other countries, but source their funds from autonomous sources and this encouraged innovation, creativity and discipline within their operations.

According to him, “the President must stand with the people on this. This new CBN policy on forex, we believe is well-thought out and focused on extricating the nation from the stranglehold of a cabal that are bent on keeping the nation marooned in the cesspit of under-development impervious to the sensitivities of the nation and the suffering which their profiteering is capable of unleashing on the masses. With dwindling foreign exchange revenue accruing to the nation, it will be foolhardy to continue with a system that is clearly profligate and counter-productive”

The CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, while announcing the suspension recently said that despite the fact that Nigeria was the only country in the world where a Central Bank sells dollars directly to BDCs, operators have not reciprocated that gesture to help maintain stability in the market.

The Governor lamented that rather than help to achieve the laudable objectives for which they were licensed, the BDCs have recorded unintended outcomes with interest only in widening margins and profits from the foreign exchange market regardless of prevailing official and interbank rates.

Emefiele said that BDCs had abandoned the original objective of their establishment, which was to serve retail end users who need US$5,000 or less becoming, instead, wholesale dealers in foreign exchange to the tune of millions of dollars per transaction.

He also accused them of using fake documentations like passport numbers, BVNs, boarding passes, and flight tickets to render weekly returns to the CBN.