Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), has said that President Bola Tinubu appointed the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr. Olayemi Cardoso, with what he described as “patch-patch” Curriculum Vitae (CV).
Lawal, who said this while speaking during an interview on Arise News Television on Wednesday said that the new CBN governor has ‘patch-patch CV’ because he was ‘merely’ the Commissioner of Planning in Lagos State, which according to the former SGF, is a very small state out of the 36 states in the country.
He noted that though Lagos could be seen as a big economy, it cannot be used as a basis to say that the CBN Governor has enough experience to be in that position.
Lawal said, “As to his Central Bank Governor, in my response to APC (All Progressives Congress) when they decided to take me on, I mentioned that the President had a Central Bank Governor with ‘patch-patch’ CV.
“I said ‘patch-patch’ CV because he was the commissioner of planning in Lagos State, a very small state out of the 36 states we have. It is a big economy but you cannot say he has enough experience to be in that position as the Central Bank governor.
“They also went on to say that he was a chairman of a bank with 13 branches, and that doesn’t give him sufficient exposure – a bank with 13 branches. I mentioned that they are all located around Lagos with two branches in Lagos, Warri, Benin City, and all that.
“To me, the bank was targeting oil money and he is now the Central Bank governor.”
Speaking further, Lawal who said he had already argued that Cardoso was not qualified for the position of the CBN governor said, “He didn’t disappoint my expectations because the first thing he did as the Governor was to remove the import ban on 43 items, most of which were very critical to Nigeria’s food sufficiency.
“He removed the ban on importation of rice. Nigeria had a very massive programme on self-sufficiency in rice for the Anchor Borrowers Programme, and we were beginning to reach about 90% self-sufficiency.
“We farmers were beginning to think that by next year, we will be exporting the excess rice that we have produced but he comes and says no, you are now free to import rice, he can give you the foreign exchange to import rice.
“He does the same thing on many other agricultural items. It convinces me that my suspicion that this man will not be able to do this job was right.”
