Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been put under heavy attack again by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) This is coming barely a week that the presidency lambasted him over his comment on the planned introduction of N5000 notes by the apex Bank.
It would be recalled the former, President at a roundtable advocacy forum organized by the Institute of Directors, Nigeria, in Lagos, recently asserted that the N5000 note would kill production and affect small businesses negatively.
He said, “I understand that now he is focused on fighting inflation, which is a good idea. But if this (N5000 note inclusive) and all that he is focused on is fighting inflation, it will kill production.”
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi has described the former President as “a very bad economist” who started the introduction of higher denomination during his reign as the president of the country.
Sanusi, while speaking at the sixth annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria in Abuja, said Obasanjo doesn’t understand the impact of the proposed N5000 notes on the economy when he was recently quoted to have said that it would cause inflation and kill small businesses.
He reminded him that the high currency denominations in the country, including N1000 notes were introduced between 1999 and 2007 when the former President was in power.
He said: “This is an interesting country because my uncle or my father, who is our former Head of State, Gen. Obasanjo, you know he is a very successful farmer, but he is a very bad economist. He stand up and says that this higher denomination (N5000 note) will cause inflation and improve hardship.”
Debunking his assertion, the CBN boss said, “Gen. Obasanjo did N20, he did N100, N200, N500 and N1, 000. He introduced higher denominations in Nigeria than any other head of state. He did a N100 note in 1999, he did N200 in 2000, he did N500 two years later and in that period inflation was coming down because it was accompanied by prudent fiscal and monetary policy.
“For somebody (Obasanjo) who had done this to stand up and say introducing a higher denomination will cause inflation must be an empirical, most important determinant of inflation in our country given the number of notes he had printed.
“We all know that we cannot have inflation by printing higher bills if you don’t increase money supply and this is simple economics.”
“We are introducing coins for various reasons. First as part of cost management, the N5, N10 and N20 notes have a very high frequency and we have to replace them every three months but the coins last longer.
“Second, we are working on a hypothesis that the reason Nigerians do not accept the coins is because they can’t buy anything with them and maybe if you give them coins that have value as a medium of exchange they would accept them.”
He maintained that the introduction of the N5000 would enhance the store of value function of the naira.
He noted that: “In the 1970s, when the N20 was introduced, N20 was the equivalent of $30. In 2012, when we would have introduced N5000 note, N5000 will be the equivalent of $30.
“If you could buy $30 with one N20 bill in 1978, you now need 250 N20 bill to buy $30 and you would have had to print those 250 bills, pay for the paper, the ink, for the security features, for transportation, for insurance, for clearing, for the bullion van and processing and these are costs to the economy.
“You have had years of inflation, we had devaluation of currency after the crisis and we are printing more and more papers.
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