Following the appointment of Olayemi Micheal Cardoso as the acting Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor President Bola Tinubu appears to have completely rid the country’s public financial sector of the appointees of his predecessor, appointing in their place his own men.
Cardoso, a former commissioner under Tinubu while he was governor of Lagos state was appointed by the president to replace embattled CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele who is facing corruption charges and is currently being detained by the Department of State Services, DSS.
His name and four other Deputy Governor nominees have now been sent to the Senate for confirmation, according to a statement released on Friday by Ajuri Ngelale, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity.
“President Bola Tinubu has approved the nomination of Dr. Olayemi Michael Cardoso to serve as the new Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), for a term of five (5) years at the first instance, pending his confirmation by the Nigerian Senate,” the statement said.
The president’s spokesman said further that the four Deputy Governors were appointed in “conformity with Section 8 (1) of the Central Bank of Nigeria Act, 2007, which vests in the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the authority to appoint the governor and four (4) deputy governors for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), subject to confirmation by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.
if he’s confirmed by the Senate, Cardoso’s appointment has completed the cycle of key appointments President Tinubu has made in the nation’s financial sector since he came to power on May 29, 2023, according to keen business and financial analysts who spoke on the issue.
According to this school of thought, the president has left no one in doubt of his plan to reform the financial sector of the economy by appointing his own people who he believes can expand the revenue net, as well as give him quality advice on how to implement public finance policies.
“The monetary and fiscal policies of the country need total re-engineering if any achievement is to be made in these areas. It will be difficult for the current administration to work with some appointees it inherited from the former government. Some people just have to go,” a source in the Ministry of Finance said.
The reform, according to the source started with the appointment of Wale Edun as the Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minster of the Economy.
The minister served as the commissioner of Finance while the president was the governor of Lagos state. His appointment did not surprise many who credited him for the success of the Tinubu administration in Lagos state in the area of management of the state’s financial resources.
Before Cardoso’s appointment, President Tinubu had appointed Zach Adedeji, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, to replace Muhammad Nami who has been directed to proceed on three months compulsory leave.
Adedeji, a former Commissioner of Finance in Oyos State and close aide of the president had earlier been appointed as Special Adviser on Revenue, but some key analysts in the financial sector said he had been tipped to head the government revenue generating agency.
Meanwhile, close analysts in the financial sector said what these appointees have in common, apart from their pedigree as technocrats, is that they have once worked with the president one way or the other in the past.
