The Presidency said on Sunday that the changes happening in the Central Bank of Nigeria are aimed at fixing the weaknesses that the bank’s previous Governor, Godwin Emefiele, took advantage of while in office.
The President's Media and Publicity Special Adviser, Mr Ajuri Ngelale, mentioned this during an appearance on TVC’s Politics on Sunday with Mr Femi Akande.
On June 9, 2023, Tinubu suspended the former CBN chief as part of an ongoing investigation of his office and the planned improvements in the financial sector of the economy.
The Department of State Services later detained him while searching his Lagos home, reportedly finding bags of cash and documents during the process.
On July 30, 2023, the President appointed Jim Obazee, the Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, as a special investigator to look into the apex Bank.
The President instructed the special investigator to look into the CBN and important government business entities, and specified that the investigator would report directly to the President’s office.
In the months following, more information came to light, including the fake signature of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari and documents allegedly written by Boss Mustapha, the former secretary to the government of the federation, to encourage the payment of $6.23m from the CBN.
However, Ngelale stated that Tinubu is leading changes that will close the loopholes that allowed for the wrongdoing of the past.
“Going forward, the type of collaboration we saw between CBN officials, high-ranking government officials, and high-ranking members of the private sector, they’re not going to be able to work together to find weaknesses within the system because we have a president who is an auditor and accountant who will close those loopholes just as he did in Lagos State many years ago.
“The President (Tinubu) has thoroughly reviewed the organizational structures that led to Godwin Emefiele putting the nation in the position that it currently is.
“And he has said, even by legislation, that we are going to ensure that not only guardrails are put in place, but that legislative changes be enacted in such a way that this can never happen,” the Presidential spokesman explained.
