‘Regulatory capture’ cause of mutilated naira notes in circulation, other malfeasance by banks, says Owoh

Commercial banks in the country may be having dominion over the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), resulting in the apex bank losing the regulatory grip over them, thus paving way for a free reign of malfeasances, including the illegal re-issuance into circulation of several volumes of torn and mutilated naira currencies already consigned for destruction by the CBN.

According to Prof Godwin Owoh, Chairman of Society for Analytical Economics, a global think-tank consulting firm and one of key policy advisors to Prof Chukwuma Soludo during his term as the CBN governor, the development, which he described as ‘Regulatory Capture,’ is a phenomenon whereby the commercial banks have become too powerful to be controlled by the CBN, their regulator, owing to compromise by the chief regulator (the CBN governor), now being Mr. Godwin Emefiele, because he was one of the banking sector operators (like his predecessor), being a former managing director of Zenith Bank Plc, from where he was appointed to head the CBN.

Owoh insisted that it is misnomer for an operator in the banking industry to be appointed to regulate an industry in which he/she has a lot of interest, adding that there would be a lot of conflict of interest that would be tilted towards narrow and selfish interest, against national interest.

The Guardian, April 21, 2018

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