Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has eased out the Managing Director (MD) of the Nigeria Commodity Exchange (NCX) Mrs. Zaheera Baba-Ari and her Executive Management.

This followed the commencement of work by the Interim Management team led by Mr. Elenwor Ihua, a Deputy Director in the Department of Development Finance of CBN.

Mr. Ihua’s team has a mandate to temporarily oversee the operations of the Exchange and supervise an independent, transparent process to appoint a new Executive Management for the NCX that would efficiently run the organization.

• READ ALSO: How CBN’s forex policy will defend Naira — GTB

CBN which has provided about N50 billion for the restructuring of the NCX had in January announced Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Mrs. Aisha Ahmad, as Chairman of the new Board of the exchange.

Two directors of the apex bank were also appointed as members of the Board. They were: Mr. Philip Yila of the Development Finance Department and Dr. Angela Sere-Ejembi of the Financial Market Department.

The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, who has been driving the Anchor Borrowers Programme to raise the bar in the agricultural sector said that the exchange would play a major role in the agribusiness sector of the economy.

He said that the restructuring of the organization was necessary in order to make it more efficient in ensuring that farmers had the right value for their commodities and to ensure food security in the nation.

The exchange was established to provide an innovative commodity trading platform that would engender shared prosperity among market actors, through quality assurance and price stability.

It was operating through four standing committees: Membership and Finance Committee, Trading Committee, Clearing House Committee and Arbitration and Vigilance Committee.

All the committees have established rules and regulations governing their operations, meet from time to time on cases relating to each of them and make recommendations to the Board for consideration and approval.

The membership of the Exchange is composed of Broker Dealer members, Dealer members, and Broker members.

Tradable commodities on the exchange include: Sorghum, sesame seed, soyabean, maize and cocoa.

Before her removal, the CEO of NCX had announced plans to set up a market information system for 12 commodity markets in the country.

Mrs. Baba-Ari said that within the next few months, the market information systems for the 12 major markets would be replicated in the 36 states and this would enable people to get information about commodities prices as well as production of agricultural produce.

NCX was originally established by the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, as Abuja Stock Exchange (ASE), in 1998 as a rival to the Nigerian Stock Exchange in Lagos. It was set up to trade in equities, unlisted stocks and plain vanilla bonds.

However, following public outcry the move for a second and rival exchange was dropped as the organisation was later converted to a commodity exchange in 2000. It went live in 2001 but with minimal impact which led to the takeover by the CBN to restructure it.