OFFA BORN FIRST WOMAN AG. CBN GOVERNOR RETIRES
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Mrs Sarah Alade, Deputy Governor in charge of Policy at the Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) retired from the bank on Wednesday after spending 23 years at the
bank.
She urged the Governor of the apex bank, Godwin Emefiele to uphold the
credibility of the bank.
Alade,
who once served as acting Governor following the sack of Lamido Sanusi, now the
Emir of Kano, said this at her send-off celebration.
In
attendance was the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele; Minister of Finance, Mrs
Kemi Adeosun; Minister of Budget and National Planning, Mr Udo Udoma; and
international partners from IMF, World bank, amongst others.
“Throughout my period at the bank, I have one
slight regret and that’s during the period I was acting governor. It was the
time that the CBN was being investigated. It had never happened before that the
activity of the CBN was under investigation.”
“We
went for the IMF meetings and when we meet with investors, they asked us ‘what
is happening? We understand that there was some financial mismanagement in the
CBN.’ It was humiliating.”
“I
think for me, that was a low point. The Credibility for this institution was
eroded.”
“For
an institution this important to be subjected to that, is bad. At the end of
the day, it was not just CBN that suffered for it, but the economy as a whole
did suffer.”
“So
I want to encourage us that whatever we need to do, let us do it right. We must
not subject this institution to that type of incident again,” she said.
Sharing
her experience as acting Governor of the apex bank, Alade explained that the
investigation paralysed activities at the bank.
“I
remember that during that period, I was reminded every morning that we have
four governors. The suspended governor, the governor in waiting, the acting
governor and the investigating governor.”
“I
remember that the investigating governor told us that there should be no
initiative, no payments, no decisions making, nothing. The only thing we could
do was to just maintain the bank.” READ MORE
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