9th June, 2019
The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele, says the bank, with some stakeholders, have identified smuggling and dumping as major challenges sabotaging the Nigerian economic policies.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the governor made the disclosure on the sideline of a consultative round-table entitled, “Going for Growth” with some economic stakeholders in Lagos.
The essence of the round-table was to encourage participants to highlight important building blocks that would lead to greater economic growth in the country.
It also involves the CBN Governor listening to their ideas and views on how productivity and investments by companies operating in Nigeria can be improved.
According to Emefiele, “We have identified smugglers and people dumping goods as those who sabotage those policies and we decided that we will deal with them.
“The strategy that we came up with is that we will not bother ourselves with them.
“There is an agency of government that is responsible for border control and if these people pass through the border control we would use the instrumentality of being the regulator of the banking system to make sure that we get the banks to provide all details about them.
“We investigate their accounts and if they are found in economic sabotage, boarding, smuggling and dumping in Nigeria, we would not only block their accounts, we would close their accounts in all the Nigerian banks simultaneously.
He also said the CBN asked commercial banks to close those companies’ accounts and those of the top members of such entities, and promised to come up with the names of those that had been identified in due course.