ICYMI: Politicians using naira to buy dollars for campaign will be arrested, says Emefiele

Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says politicians using naira to buy dollars for campaigns will be arrested.

Emefiele said this on Tuesday after the monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja.

The CBN governor kicked against people, mostly politicians, who use naira to buy dollars for campaigns.

“We monitor liquidity in the system, and as we see that there’s excess liquidity, we will continue to use discretionary powers to move those liquids from the vault of the banks so that they do not get involved or in speculative activities with people who want to speculate with the currency,” he said.

“For those who want to use the naira to buy dollars because of the election, I want to warn, not advise, that it is illegal to do so. Whereas it will sound more convenient that you should carry dollars because it has a lot of value in your pocket. But if the security agencies hold you, you know the implication of that, we would continue from our side. We have our apparatus through which we monitor the movement of funds between customers or between banks and customers from one bank to the other bank.”

Emefiele further said any culprit caught doing such illegal transactions would face the apex’s bank injurious tool.  

“Any bank that we find in those types of transactions that we consider to be unauthorised or that we consider to be illegal. You can imagine that your account will be placed on post no debit (PND),” he added.

“When your account is placed on PND, it means to not conduct banking transactions in any bank in Nigeria. It is a very injurious tool that the Central Bank uses. You can see the Central Bank has done itself into a monster that uses an injurious tool to stop you from conducting illegal flows whether domestic or foreign currency. 

“I will advise you not to get involved in or not authorise an illegal movement of money from your bank account or from one account to another account or currency conversion. When you do that and you are caught in that practice, your account will be placed on PND. I would advise that we run away from PND. because it is very dangerous to get into that net.”