The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Olayemi Cardoso, says the current management of the apex bank has done very well in its mandate of ensuring monetary and price stability.
Cardoso said this on Tuesday in Abuja, after presenting the communiqué from the 307th meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).
”This is 36 months, three years precisely, that we assumed leadership role in the CBN. And, like all things, it is a pretty good time to look back and reflect.
“In terms of context, we need to remember where we were coming from. We were coming from a place where confidence had been lost in the bank and in the country.
“That was manifested very clearly from the confidence that was lost in our currency.
“This was a time when our currency was regularly depreciating. You could not plan, and people panicked, and a lot of people externalised all they could to be able to protect their hard-earned savings,” he said.
He said this was at a time when even the rating agencies had knocked us down and really did not see much hope for the future without radical reform.
He said that the crop of individuals that constituted leadership of the CBN since 2023 had been very helpful for the MPC and for him as the CBN governor.
“The first thing, given the context that I have laid here today, was that we were able to take the bank back to its core mandate.
“At that time, Ways and Means had dropped the economy to a huge leap. We had N23.7 trillion per capita in Ways and Means, and that fuelled the very sorry situation we had with inflation. We also had interventions of over N10 trillion.
“We had a very dysfunctional foreign exchange market, whereby there were multiplicity of rates.
“Our responsibility was to restore stability and maintain both price and financial stability. Our proudest moments have been in our ability over the years to take the right decisions that have been able to take us back there,” he said. (NAN)
