The Guardian Newspaper’s editorial of Monday, 13th June proffered what it considers a plausible alternative to Central Bank’s recent directive on cash withdrawal/deposit limits with Money Deposit Banks. Indeed, Nigerians have largely been agitated by CBN’s advance notice of daily cash withdrawal/deposits limits of N150,000 and N1 million for individuals and corporate bodies respectively, as from June 2012, in place of current limits of N1 million and N10 million respectively.

Echoes of the unsuccessful bid to foist former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the nation for a third consecutive term in office continues to reverberate five years after the event. Although there were speculations that the intentions of the promoters of constitutional amendment for this purpose were not truly altruistic

I recall that, Late President UmarYar’Adua (God bless his soul) crystallized a 7-Point Development Agenda, which unfortunately, failed to impact positively on the social welfare of the critical mass in our country. Some critics believe that Yar’Adua would have done better if he focussed on two or three critical areas of deprivations for urgent attention and remedy.

Inadequate power supply has choked the development and growth of Nigeria’s economy, particularly in the last two decades. The Punch Newspapers editorial of 22/3/2010 explicitly paints this reality. That editorial specifically notes that “Poor power supply has been at the heart of the nation’s wobbly manufacturing sector whose capacity utilization has today plunged to 29 per cent.

Since the first publication ofthis article in January 2011,the unlikelihood of a beneficent impact of the 2011 budget has been given impetus by the National Assembly’s increase in consumption budget by N433bn and CBN’s increase of Monetary Policy Rate to 7.5%.

Under normal circumstances where political and public offices are geared towards the service of the people, there is little or no personal gain in capturing power or its retention.

Lately, I stumbled on TV broadcast of Lamido Sanusi’s acceptance speech on occasion of his award as Silverbird TV’s 2010 ‘Man of the Year’. The overt import of the CBN Governor’s patriotic fervor and passionate love for Nigeria would hardly be lost on the audience, or indeed, on other Nigerians, who watched on TV.

CBN Governors over the years have decried the incessant challenges of managing ‘too much cash’ in the economy.
This means that availability of cash reserves, particularly in custody of commercial banks, provides a strong platform to expand credit to their customers and further exacerbate the problem into that of ‘excess cash or liquidity’ in the system.

The membership of an association such as a Nation State implies an inherent social contract between the individual and a geopolitical organ of Administration.

Naira has been on a continuous downward pressure for the past three decades such that our currency depreciated from about 50 kobo/$1 in 1980 to its current suicidal rate of over N 150/$1.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday that the naira was overvalued and that more exchange rate flexibility would be needed to prevent the Central Bank of Nigeria from running down the foreign currency reserves to fix the rate.

My attention was drawn to a rejoinder by a Lagos based communication outfit, who described our above article as untoward.

I read with disgust an article published in the Vanguard newspaper of February 20, 2011 authored by one Les Leba entitled ‘Aganga vs Soludo: The pot and the kettle’. I have never responded to any newspaper article but after reading this one, I felt I must write.

Recently, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar published an open letter to President Goodluck Jonathan on the depressive state of the Nigerian economy.

Our sensibilities are assaulted everyday with media reports of corruption in high places, such that Nigerians now see public service as synonymous with individual pursuit of narrow self-interest.