Your Attempt To Demonise Emefiele Won’t Cleanse Your Baggage, Middle Belt Youths Tell Akpabio

A group, Middle Belt Youths Forum (MBYF), has berated the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, over his negative comment against the immediate-past governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele.

Akpabio had at the weekend again accused Emefiele, the embattled former CBN governor of leaving behind a “foamy economy” for Nigeria.

While urging Nigerians to be patient with President Bola Tinubu administration, Akpabio alleged that Emefiele “left a very big hole in the national treasury”.

But, reacting to the comment, MBYF, in a statement by its director of strategy, Caleb Pwok, told the Senate President that his patronising behaviour to the executive arm of government and demonisation of Emefiele will not cleanse him of his own alleged corruption baggage.

The youth group rather extolled Emefiele, saying that he defended the Naira very well while at the helm of affairs of the apex bank.

The group noted that the Senate President, who has been summoned by EFCC severally for interrogation over an investigation concerning corruption allegations against him, was just making utterances against Emefiele to gain favour of President Tinubu.

This, according to them, will avert the dangling hammer of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on his head.

The group wondered if the Senate President was senile, recalling that in defending the Naira and ensuring stability of the currency in the Foreign Exchange (FX) market, the CBN under Emefiele had implemented series of policies to manage the space and ensure that Banks were able to meet the demands of customers seeking forex for SMEs, school fees and medicals.

According to group, the former CBN Governor had at a time explained that, “As a result of our demand management policy, the naira has remained largely stable at the I & E window, particularly since the discontinuation of FX allocation to Bureau De Change operators along with the convergence between the CBN and NAFEX rates.”

They said: “Following these policies implementation particularly the stoppage of FX allocation to Bureau De Change operators, the naira maintained relative stability since 2021, according to the CBN, at N411.50/US$ in August but declined to N414.33/US$ in December. The currency rate was N416.98/US$ in February 2022. For a long time, the CBN has used a controlled float exchange rate regime.”

They added that with the above statements, the Senate President needed no further proof with the current policies and the CBN and exchange rate under the government which Akpabio is an integral part, that he is the one that created a ‘foaming economy’.