By BLESSING OKEZIE, Lagos
“The conferment of the fellowship status of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria to me today, is a dream come true. It shows that God being on our side, with hard work and dedication, we can turn our dreams to reality.”
The above extract are the exact words of Mr Ebenezer Nwakanma Nwoji, one of the awardees at the 19th conferring of fellowship status ceremony of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, held in Lagos.
Nwoji, who qualified as a chartered Accountant and a member of ICAN a decade ago, holds B.Sc Accounting from the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus (UNEC) and M.Sc, Finance from University of Lagos in addition to ACA, ACI .
Currently, he is the Divisional, Head Market Oversight FMDQ Securities Exchange Ltd.
At FMDQ, he coordinates, monitors and directs overall activities of market oversight division and is also responsible for the activities of market services group of the Exchange.
He has attended several local and international trainings in finance management from where he acquired strong analytical skills in economic matters.
In one of his critical analysis of the Nigerian economy with special focus on fluctuation and galloping rise in the exchange rate of dollar to Naira,
he critically analyzed a statement made by the former CBN Governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo in a text he titled “Strategic Agenda for Naira”, posing to Nigerians mind-boggling question on whether or not any right thinking individuals in the country should feel concern on the trend of things in Nigeria’s financial system.
Nwoji, a former bank trader, critically examined what has transpired in the Nigerian money market system between 2007 when the former CBN Governor wrote the article and now in terms of exchange rate of Naira to other world leading currencies .
“After digesting the content, I went into deep thought as to how we got it wrong as a nation. As of January 2007, the monthly average exchange rates of the Naira to the Dollar were N128.37 and N130.07 for IFEM (USD) and BDC (USD) respectively. While in October 2020, monthly average exchange rates of the Naira to the Dollar were N381.00 and N459.50 for IFEM (USD) and BDC (USD) respectively.”
Continuing, he said “It is important to note that Soludo made the statement at a time when 2020 was predicted by the CBN as the year the Nigerian economy is expected to reach its full potentials, driven by “a comprehensive long-term reform agenda for the financial system (the Financial System Strategy 2020 —FSS2020)”.
Breaking the 11 page documents of the former apex bank governor into series for critical analysis, he extracted the portion where the former CBN helmsman talked about his 13 point agenda to restructure, refocus and strengthen the Naira thus quoting him as saying “As you may recall, it is about three years since we launched (in this very Auditorium on July 6, 2004) the 13-point reform agenda designed to restructure, refocus and strengthen the Nigerian banking and financial system. At that meeting, I observed that the agenda constituted ‘Phase One’ of the reforms. We have since introduced other complementary reforms designed to stabilize the exchange rate, reduce inflation, reform microfinance, restructure the lower denominations of our currency and re-introduce coins, as well as promote the efficiency of the payments system”
In his analysis of this particular statement, he threw a Poser to operators of Nigerian finance system by asking “Is there any need for concern in view of the above excerpt? Has the exchange rate been
stabilised or destabilised? Has inflation decreased or increased? Has the “Strategic Agenda for the Naira” been a failure or a success with respect to stabilizing the exchange rate, reducing inflation, reforming microfinance, and restructuring the lower denominations?”, he asked.
Nwoji said, for Nigeria’s economy to regain stability, there is need for general overhaul of the economy to re-examine various strategies targeted at restructuring the economy which have been abandoned over the years.
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