Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has reportedly ordered the central bank to stop providing funding for food imports, the President’s spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday, reported Reuters.
“President Muhammadu Buhari … disclosed that he has directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stop providing foreign exchange for importation of food into the country,” Tuesday’s statement said.
According to the statement, Buhari said, “Don’t give a cent to anybody to import food into the country.”
The statement added that Buhari’s call to the central bank to stop providing funding for food imports was in line with efforts to bring about a steady improvement in agricultural production, and attainment of full food security.
“The foreign reserve will be conserved and utilized strictly for diversification of the economy, and not for encouraging more dependence on foreign food import bills,” the statement said.
Notably, Nigeria is the African continent’s top oil producer and it relies on crude sales for about 90 percent of its foreign exchange. The country emerged from the 2016 recession, which was caused due to low oil prices, just two years ago.
Since Buhari first became president in 2015, Nigeria’s central bank has implemented policies aimed at stimulating growth in the agricultural sector to reduce dependence on the oil sector. The policies even included a 2015 ban on access to foreign exchange for 41 items that the bank felt could be produced in Nigeria.
The latest order comes just weeks after Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele last month said the bank would ban access to foreign exchange to import milk.
Tuesday’s statement has brought into question the central bank’s status as an independent body.
Kingsley Moghalu, who served as deputy central bank governor from 2009 to 2014, said the central bank act of 2007 clearly defines that the bank is an independent body that is not supposed to take any order from any politician.
“The trajectory in this administration is that we have seen a very clear tendency for the president to direct people,” Moghalu said.” Increasingly Nigeria’s institutions have lost independence.”
