By Emma Ujah,  Abuja Bureau Chief & Mike Eboh

The planned protest by the #OccupyCBN group at the Central Bank Nigeria (CBN) which was to shut the nation’s apex bank in Abuja , yesterday, failed to achieve its objectives.

The leader of the group, Mr. Deji Adeyanju, failed to mobilize a large crowd for the protest as only a handful of placard-carrying women and young men converged at the junction between the CBN, Women Development Centre and the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission, at about 9.30 am.

#OccupyCBN had been campaigning on social media and calling out members of the public for a protest against the apex bank’s   foreign exchange policies.

However, the group which had earlier been described by CBN’s Acting Director, Corporate communications, Isaac Okorafor, as “paid agents of selfish interests and enemies of the Nigerian economy, who are working for currency speculators”, left the junction on their own after a few minutes of speaking to pressmen.

The leader of the group said   his team was not out to make trouble but to obtain explanations why the Naira should be allowed to lose value against the US Dollar.

Mr. Adeyanju, criticised what he described as different exchange rates, while he stated that no country in the world can achieve progress with such structure.

“The bank is not in charge of the economy. The policies of the bank are not working. We have a situation where the bank can not specifically tell us in details, how to strengthen the naira, if you ask them that question now, they do not have the answer.”

Adeyanju said the Federal Government and the CBN must deliberately take steps, and measures to ensure the naira is strengthened.

“Nigerians on the streets do not really care about this big grammar. Nigerians on the street want to go to the pharmacy and buy Panadol at N700 per pack,” he noted.

In its statement earlier in the week, the CBN alerted the public to an arranged protest by a paid group working for “powerful interests who want the CBN and Government to reverse the policy on conservation of forex and sabotage the ongoing efforts to wean Nigerians from senseless importation.”

Reacting, the CBN said the group “want to create markets for importers to the detriment of the Nigerian economy. No amount of blackmail will make the CBN allow a practice whereby our farmers and industrialists who have invested heavily and employed our youths in the production of Nigerian made rice, fish, industrial starch, palm produce, wheat, tooth pick, wines, etc, would be made to close their farms and factories again.

What these charlatans and hirelings want are basically twofold. First, they want the CBN to give out the nations scarce foreign exchange to their sponsors to import all manner of foreign goods and dump them on our markets thereby frustrating the good work our own farmers and manufacturers have begun.