Who is Soludo?

Soludo -no solution

In the post of February 2, 2009 by Fortune&Class magazine titled Yar’Adua under pressure to renew Soludo’s tenure as CBN’s governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo claimed that Nigerian economy was not in any way impacted by the world global economic crisis, the statement he had long denied.

Again, as our naira began its decline in December 2008, the CBN Governor made comments that ‘the devaluation was caused by currency speculations by some individuals and certain banks in the country.’

The Governor noted that, “the CBN was aware of the individuals responsible for the devaluation and the CBN will do all in their power to ascertain the speculators are punished”. However, several weeks later the CBN made an official statement that they are responsible for the devaluation of the currency. Again, this was denied too.

Now, it is beginning to look like the CBN does not really have a clue about the problems confronting the Nation. First Nigeria was not impacted, and then later Nigeria was impacted. Then speculators were responsible for the currency devaluation, later the CBN was intentionally letting the currency fall.

And for a man who is not sure of his standings, what sense is there in shifting blames by claiming that, “With the Obama government proposing to invest heavily on alternative energy sources, there is a permanent threat to oil as mainstay of the Nigerian economy. Unless we take urgent steps to address the situation by also finding an alternative to oil as the mainstay of our economy, we might be back to the similar crisis we witnessed in 1982 when the price of oil crashed, government revenue declined and it became difficult for government at all levels to pay salaries. There was also the abandoned projects syndrome, increased import of almost anything until government was forced to place a ban on foreign currency trafficking because it was being abused.”

Must the nation always depend of oil revenue for its GDP growth? What policies is he making in his on position as the nation’s apex bank governor in ensuring economic stabilities in the areas of agriculture? Has he forgotten the effect of policy somersaults on the masses? What actually are his achievements in the area of micro-finance banks, interest rates. Yet also to be forgiven is the politics he played in the uniform year ends for the financial industry? It is a pity what our leaders are turning us into. With this kind of comments, the African nations in general are being portrayed as beggars. But we are not.

Such missteps do not send good signals to Nigerians and foreign investors because what these pronouncements and subsequent contradictions show is that either the CBN does not understand the economic problems confronting the nation or they have intentionally decided to confuse or misrepresent the facts to the nation. These types of inconsistencies will eventually result in a great loss of confidence, because what it indicates is that if the CBN is unable to determine what the problems of the economy are, a solution may not be forthcoming or formulated to fix it.

A popular maxim says a person tries his whole life to rebuild a day tarnished reputation. No matter what, the history has been re-written of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo as the most confusing governor of the central bank of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And that is who Soludo is, a man without solution.

Story by Dman John.