Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has threatened to tag companies that are involved in smuggling of goods and products into Nigeria as economic saboteurs, and also deal with them, their owners and top management members decisively. The governor of the apex bank, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, disclosed this while delivering the maiden edition of distinguished leadership lecture series, entitled: ‘Up Against the Tide: Nigeria’s Heterodox Monetary Policy and the Bretton Woods Consensus,’ organised by the University of Ibadan in conjunction with CBN held at the International Conference Centre of UI, yesterday.
He said the measure would be one of the unconventional tools to stabilise the economy of the country, create jobs, and reduce insecurity in the country. According to Emefiele, “once we suspect that your company is involved in smuggling and dumping, we will call for your account, we will investigate your account, we will investigate how you source the foreign exchange, we will tag on you “money laundering”, we will tag you an illegal importer of foreign exchange into Nigeria, and we will tag on you economic sabotage. “By the time we establish those facts, we will write to all Nigerian banks and tell them to close all accounts of this company in Nigeria, close all the accounts of owners of this company in Nigeria, and all accounts of top management members of this company in Nigeria, because those top management members know that what they are doing is illegal. So, they also have to pay a price for it, so that people can learn to obey and respect economic policies of the country. That is what we will do.”