There are speculations that President Bola Tinubu may have asked Mr. Yemi Cardoso to resign as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Media report claims that President Tinubu, in asking Cardoso to honourably throw in the towel, is peeved that more than one year in the apex bank saddle, he has been unable to check the poor performance of the economy, especially the free fall of the Naira.
The president reportedly gave the marching order to Cardoso before he left Nigeria for China, allegedly rebuffing pleas and pressure from the acclaimed Yoruba elders who had tried to intervene to save Cardoso’s job. Cardoso, who reportedly secured the nomination for the plum job through the Yoruba Elders, the report further claimed, has failed to demonstrate the capacity to turn around the troubled institution, and the poor economy he inherited.
Cardoso’s undoing, the report quoted insider sources, has been his inability to live up to the promise to he made to President Tinubu in January to salvage the Naira and return it to between N700 and N900/$1 before May 29, 2024, and also, save the economy from the ruins it currently lays.
The Naira began its historic fall against the dollar, dropping from the N950/$1 rate observed at the close of the week that Cardoso was appointed to N960/$1 by Monday of the following as Nigeria’s new central bank governor. It slipped further to N970/$1 in the early hours of Tuesday, the following day.
This decline, which started immediately after his nomination, has seen the local currency plummet by 117.41 per cent to N1645.626/$1 as of September 12, 2024, nearly one year after he took over from Folashodun Shonubi.
The continuous crash of the Naira and the poor economy reportedly put a wedge in the way of celebrating the historic May 29 as it ought to be.
“The president is worried about the exchange rate and angry that Cardoso’s one year in office could not revive the Naira to between N700 and N900 before May 29 as he promised. The President waited for him to actualise the promise by May 29, June 29, and July 29 before he got tired of waiting in August when he invited him to submit his resignation,” media reports further quoted a source.
The report said that Cardoso, on seeing Tinubu’s seriousness on the matter, allegedly prostrated and begged, but the President insisted that Cardoso should submit his resignation letter the next day.
On the next day, however, sources disclosed that during a meeting between Hadiza Bala-Usman, the President’s Special Adviser on Policy Coordination, a troubled Cardoso reportedly breezed in with some Yoruba elders including Prince Dipo Eludoyin, Pius Akinyelure, the chairman of NNPC, Bisi Akande, a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and some others, and in the presence of Hadiza, and begged Tinubu to give him another chance.
Tinubu, who was visible angry, allegedly rebuffed their entreaties, insisting that Cardoso should resign, having failed to live up to expectations.
At that point, Hadiza Bala-Usman was reportedly asked to excuse them, while the president was quoted as saying:
“I told you to bring your resignation letter; you do not need to beg because you promised in January that you would revive the Naira before May 29, and I have been asking you if I should bring N700 or N900 for you to give me $1, but you can’t find it.”