FORMER Deputy Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Prof Kingsley Moghalu, has criticised the tenure of the embattled former CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, saying that he was more of a political ‘poodle’ or lackey than a real central banker.
“The notion of central bank independence was utterly foreign to him. All the late Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency had to say was ‘Jump’ and he would ask: ‘How High?’ At the end, like Nza the little bird in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, he decided to challenge his ‘chi’ (deity) to a wrestling match by seeking to move from the central bank into Aso Rock as President without resigning from a public service post, and ended up where he ended up,” Moghalu posted on his X handle on Sunday, in scathing attack on Mr Emefiele.
Emefiele is facing trials over his conduct and activities as the CBN Governor. He headed the CBN between 2015 and 2023. Special Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) investigator, Mr Jim Obazee, had alleged, after an investigation, that Mr Emefiele used proxies to acquire three banks in Nigeria.
The reports, which focused on the acquisition of Union Bank, Keystone Bank and Polaris Bank, were submitted to President Bola Tinubu in two separate letters dated December 20, 2023.
“Keystone was acquired for free as did Polaris Bank and the special investigator should liaise with the CBN to recover these two banks to the Federal Government of Nigeria,” said one of the reports.
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Another report on the acquisition of Keystone Bank alleged that the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) managing director moved N20 billion to Heritage Bank as placement in 2010. Consequently, Heritage Bank provided “a loan of N25 billion to the promoters of Isa Funtua/Emefiele group’s acquisition vehicles to buy Keystone Bank.”
Former President Muhammadu Buhari ( now late) and Godwin Emefiele on January 19, 2023 at State House, Abuja
An audit by the CBN in 2023 further uncovered irregularities and fraud in the Godwin Emefiele-led foreign exchange (FX) forward contracts.
An FX forward contract is an agreement between two parties to exchange an amount of one currency for another at a predetermined exchange rate on a future date.
In a circular released by the CBN in April 2025 entitled, ‘Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on the Settlement of Undelivered Forward Contracts,’ the bank said that fraud, misrepresentation, lack of proper documentation, and illegality or breach of law were found in the FX contracts embarked upon by the previous administration of the bank led by Emefiele.
In September 2023, the CBN had engaged Deloitte to conduct a comprehensive forensic audit of all transactions in the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (RSMIS), including undelivered forward contracts, carried out under Mr Emefiele.
The audit found a company name on approved sales result that was different from the company name on Form M portal. It also discovered that the cumulative value of the approved FX forward sales on the forex form number from Auction 1 in 2021 to the date of the auction exceeded the total value of the forex form number.
Moghalu’s take on African central banks
In his further analysis, Prof Moghalu noted that central banks had tended in most countries of the world to have statutory institutional independence preventing or at least restraining interference from political masters. He said politicians in Africa and other continents often viewed central bank’s independence with great suspicion and unease, noting that the thought of an institution that would not be under the direct and daily command of a head of government was anathema to most politicians, except in truly mature polities.
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“Thus, politics eats economics for breakfast,” he said. He noted that central banks in Africa often laboured like the Greek mythical King Sisyphus, who was condemned to rolling a huge boulder up the hill but could never tip it over to the other side because it kept rolling back down.
“While they work, politicians ‘scatter,’ constraining the possibilities for overall macroeconomic management and economic transformation. It takes a combination of strong independence of a central bank and strong influence of the finance ministry function to reign in politicians with itchy fingers for borrowing and profligate spending, which creates many problems including inflation,” he explained.
