In the light of the usual extended recess during the forthcoming Id el-Kabir and the Christmas/New Year celebrations, the Legislature may have, possibly less than two months within which to consider and approve the 2013 budget, which President Jonathan laid before the National Assembly last week.

In the light of the usual extended recess during the forthcoming Id el-Kabir and the Christmas/New Year celebrations, the Legislature may have, possibly less than two months within which to consider and approve the 2013 budget, which President Jonathan laid before the National Assembly last week.

Nigerians breathed a sigh of relief when news filtered out on Thursday, 20th September, that President Goodluck Jonathan had directed the CBN to suspend its proposed naira restructuring programme. For the avoidance of doubt, on Friday, September 21, 2012, the CBN itself carried a timely advertorial titled Update on the Proposed Currency Restructuring Exercise, Project Cure.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ) has observed that the Central Bank’s attempt to tackle inflation with the N5000 note is misguided. OBJ also submitted that “the way Sanusi was fighting inflation by removing money from circulation was improper…, as this approach would kill production and affect small businesses negatively”.

The Central Bank of Nigeria and its agents have been very active, as should be expected, in promoting the merits of the proposed N5000 note. To this end, the apex bank also set out to dispel what it alleges to be disinformation regarding the proposed exercise.

The argument that the N5, 000 bill should not be introduced because it would spur corruption does not hold here because those that are using our currency for corruption have already migrated to the dollar because the naira has lost its value. The dollar has now become the store of value. That is why we are introducing a higher bill of value because we don’t want to dollarise our economy. We need to be in charge of the money that comes in and goes out”.

THE Central Bank served an advance notice of the introduction of a N5,000 note as well as the redesigning of the existing currency profile; under the proposed arrangement, six of the denominations i.e. N5,000, N1,000, N500, N200, N100, N50 will remain in notes form, while N20, N10, N5, N2, N1 and 50K will circulate as coins.

The national debt burden, which was about $32bn in 2006 was regarded as excessive and unsustainable. Consequently, we were encouraged to part with $18bn in order to cancel most of our external debt. Inexplicably, just six years down the line, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who as Finance Minister incidentally ‘midwifed’ the controversial debt payout in 2006, now confidently assures Nigerians that our current debt burden of about $45bn is nothing to worry about, since, at only 17%, it falls well below the critical debt to GDP benchmark of 40%! The Coordinating Minister of the Economy is obviously unfazed that the average cost of servicing over N6 Trillion of these debts annually is in excess of 15% in place of 1 – 7% for such risk-free sovereign debts elsewhere.

In democratic countries where utmost respect for the rule of law prevails, constitutional violations not only receive condemnations, but are also visited with serious sanctions. Indeed, even when social evolution overtime makes earlier constitutional and legal provisions redundant, the judiciary will still mete out existing sanctions provided in the constitution for such infractions. We note, for example, the inability of the terminally ill Mr. Tony Nicklinson to willfully put an end to his suffering, without the jeopardy of a life sentence for anyone who facilitates his suicide, according to English law.

One of the conclusions reached by the House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee on the Capital Market was the shrill alarm that the Asset Management Corporation, AMCON, was a time bomb waiting to explode. Consequently, this week’s article is a brief overview of AMCON, the ‘toxic’ bank.