The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that itsvision is to be a model for central bank around theworld by 2015.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that its
vision is to be a model for central bank around the
world by 2015.
The Governor of CBN, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, who
disclosed this at the Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie
(UUBO) 30th anniversary lecture, titled: “What
Next” said “I remember when we were having the
debate of a model for central banks in Africa and
the world, and I said to them, what is it about that
the Nigeria’s central bank cannot be a benchmark
of central banking.”

The CBN Governor listed models that it had
mapped out to execute, to include: The Economic
Policy Directorate for monitoring authority with the
objective of ensuring high stability that is
conceived in economic growth; The Financial
System Stability with the objective of promoting
sound financial system; and Operation Directorate,
to provide a credible reliable and efficient payment
system.
“And the idea behind the models was to achieve a
monetary policy objective. “You have to compete
with the other low inflation economies in the world,
which is why we have to beat inflation down from
15.6 percent in 2009 to between seven and eight
percent. We wanted to get away from the day when
people will wake up and see that the banking
system has already collapsed” he added.
“But more importantly, we wanted people to
understand that even if a bank will go under, there
was the central bank that will protect deposits
which is why throughout the crisis and we’ve seen
that everywhere, throughout the world’s banking
crisis, Nigeria is the only country that had a
banking crisis on the scale where not a single
depositor or creditor lost a single penny in the
bank” Sanusi said.
Lamenting on the 2007 and 2009 crisis of the
Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and the banks, he
said, “Can you imagine in 2009 the capital market
has crashed by 70 percent, in 2007, the NSE was
the best performing stock exchange in the world.
In 2009, it was the worst performing stock
exchange in the world, there has been a big bubble
which has burst, banks were crying over fifty
million and hundred million naira, inter-bank rate
were so high in the inter-bank market.
For the banks, he stated, “What we discovered
when we went into the banks was much, much
bigger than what we thought. We discovered that
the total amount taken by the CEO’s was
equivalent to what we were distributing monthly
into the federations account. “If you go back to
September 2010, we distributed 236 billion to our
federation and at the end of that month, the
balances of the account associated with one bank
were 235 billion to know how bad it was and it
was so bad that every member of committee of
governors shared tears.”
Meanwhile, Senator Udo Udoma, Founding Partner,
UUBO, added that Nigeria will only get better if
only, necessities are put in their proper place.
Udoma said, “Am very positive about Nigeria, we
have a lot of entrepreneurial people, who are
hardworking, what we need in this country is our
infrastructural system, we need good transport,
good power system, once we can fix this, this
country will pick up, already, we are about to fix
power, we have fix telecommunication, if we have
good rail system and good road we will soar in
this country.”