The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory on Thursday issued a one-week injunction to the Ministry of State Security Services to charge or release the detained Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in detention.
Judge Hamza Mawazu ordered while making a decision in the basic human rights case brought by Imphili against the State Security Department and others. Judge Mawazo held that the State Security Department had the authority to fulfill its constitutional obligations to arrest, detain and prevent domestic crimes.
However, he believes that these functions must be performed within the framework of the law. President Bola Tinubu Imfiele suspended from office with immediate effect on Friday 9 June.
This follows an ongoing investigation into his office and plans to overhaul the economy’s financial sector, according to a statement from the chief information officer in the office of Federal Cabinet Secretary Willie Bassey State.
According to the statement, Imfiele has been directed to immediately hand over his office duties to the Deputy Governor (Board of Directors), who will act as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria pending completion of the investigation and reform.
CBN said that the Deputy Director of tions Department is Mr. Folashodun Adebisi Shonubi. Immediately after Imfile was arrested, the State Security Department rushed to arrest him.
Emefiele, who was appointed governor of the main bank on June 4, 2014, was at the center of the storm in January 2023 when security agents tried to arrest him on terrorism financing and economic crimes charges.
Furthermore, the introduction of the Emefiele-led CBN redesign policy for the naira in October 2022 began controversial when the then Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, vetoed the policy after only 48 hours of notification.
Ahmed said her ministry was not consulted and knows nothing about monetary policy. The backlash created tension and uncertainty until the president asserted that Buhari had embraced a policy he claimed managed inflation, tackling currency counterfeiting, and paying ransoms.
In early January 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria launched a money exchange program in various local government areas to reach out to citizens in rural communities who complained about the lack of banks in the country. The original January 31, 2023 deadline set by the main bank so that old banknotes could not be used legally, was extended to February 10, when the country fell on hard times with the old and new naira banknotes disappearing.
The situation is exacerbated by fuel shortages across the country as Nigerians criticize government policies as ill-considered. Tinubu, then the Radical National Congress presidential candidate, also criticized those behind naira reform, which he said was aimed at his candidacy.
Source; Punch newspapers.
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