A group, the Nigerian Patriotic Quest (NPQ) has said Mr. Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria governor, is qualified to contest for the presidency in 2023, and that attempts to intimidate him out of the race won’t work.
Emefiele is rumoured to be one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s favoured candidates to succeed him in 2023, but the idea of him running for president has continued to divide opinions.
Ahmed Ja’Usman Tijani, co-ordinator of NPQ, against the backdrop of negatives views about the CBN governor running for president, argued in a statement that nobody has the right to denigrate their democratic privilege to support any person or candidate of their choice, especially as Emefiele, by all standards, is very qualified for the position.
According to him, “This statement is in response to the upsurge of negative articles in the media with the intention of discouraging our candidate and demonising his supporters. Most of these contributions are an amalgam of baseless insinuations and innuendos against Godwin Emefiele.
“Perhaps, for the further enlightenment of the naysayers, that is, if they have not been blinkered by their biases against our candidate; the upswell of support for Emefiele are borne out of his solid achievements in his previous professional engagements and also as the CBN Governor.”
He added that never in the history of central banking in Nigeria has a CBN governor frontally taken on the various challenges of the Nigerian economy: cutting across agriculture, industries, forex management, monetary policies, fighting the COVID 19 pandemic etcetera.
“In the area of boosting food security, we witnessed well thought out policies aimed at increasing access to funding by the generality of our farmers, who hitherto were locked out from the major financial institutions.
“The flagship of these policies is the Anchor Borrowers Programme, which has noticeably boosted local output in rice, sugar, wheat, cotton, cassava, maize etcetera, and helped in conserving our scarce foreign exchange.
“In the area of employment generation, the investments in agriculture and industries have heavily impacted opportunities for direct and indirect employment within the economy running into millions of jobs.”