DOES the Central Bank have the authority to take the action it has now taken? I thought the answer to that question should be obvious to all. But for the avoidance of any doubt the Central Bank’s functions could be seen from the perspective of three broad thrusts; the traditional functions, the regulatory functions and the developmental. Under the regulatory functions of the Central Bank it is expected to formulate policies to control the amount of money in circulation, control other banks and major players in the financial market and generally promote the soundness and stability of the financial system and it is this aspect of the functions of the Central Bank that empowers it to take the action it has just taken.

“THERE has been very conflicting reports from different media and different sources and to have a clear picture we have to send the team. So, any statement I am going to make now will be presumptuous. Let them come back and we will have a fair assessment of the situation that will form the basis of the statement we are going to make. At the moment, the military had moved in concert with the police to normalize the situation” - General Sarki Mukhtar, National Security Adviser, part of the statement made shortly after the emergency security meeting with the Vice President at the wake of the latest Jos crisis.

KHAYYÁM wrote a book entitled Explanations of the difficulties in the postulates in Euclid’s Elements. The book consists of several sections on the parallel postulate (Book I), on the Euclidean definition of ratios and the Anthyphairetic ratio (modern continued fractions) (Book II), and on the multiplication of ratios (Book III).

FOR me, it remains a trip to remember. There was no single dull moment. It was either that Azu Ishiekwene (then Editor of the Punch, and now executive director of the same newspaper), had literally got lost in Borders Bookshop while combing the large bookshop for books that were possibly out of print or Ibim Semenitari (then Editor of Board Street Journal and now commissioner for Information in River State), had gone out to fetch herself a cup of Starbucks coffee. Lost in thought, Azu and I wondered if her keeping long meant she was negotiating to buy the Starbucks company instead. It was fun all the way as we had the best of the two worlds of work and leisure.

The negative impact of corruption on business and economic development cannot be stressed enough. More than 70 per cent of Nigerian businesses in 2007 felt that corruption and insecurity were the two main impediments for doing business in this country. The full significance of this finding becomes evident when comparing it with the perceptions of businesses relating to factors of economic governance.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) held its 2009 Executive Seminar on the theme; ‘Cross Border Banking: Challenges and implications for monetary management’, on December 2-4, 2009 at Rockview Hotels, Abuja. I was privileged to have been invited as a participant on a panel discussion with the theme: ‘Are Nigerian Banks Sufficiently Positioned to operate Off Shore Banking’?  The other members of this high powered panel of discussants included; my long time friend Professor Hamilton O. Isu of Abia State University.

It is tragic that we are still sleepwalking in the groove of our mental backwardness. We have misplaced the sign-posts of development. We are yet to get our priority right. This is why we have been hostile to some of our policy makers in recent times.

It is a misadventure that the government got itself involved in product importation in the first place with all the problematic protracted talk about subsidy.