Mayaki, who is responsible for monetary policy mgt in Nigeria?

By Crusoe Osagie

The vacuity in John Mayaki’s reasoning is laid bare in a recent piece where he goofed while trying to misinform the public on the responsibilities of the Federal Ministry of Finance.

As it is in the forte of those of us who should know to call out these gaffes so he doesn’t miseducate the reading public, I have taken it up as a task to stress some fine points on his faulty understanding of macro-economics.

In the first line of the third paragraph of his penultimate retort against me, Mayaki, who is the attack dog of the Edo People's Movement (EPM), advertised his ignorance with the claim that the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning is ‘directly in charge of monetary policies…’.

However, contrary to Mayaki’s claims, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and not the Ministry of Finance is statutorily charged with the task to ‘ensure monetary and price stability; issue legal tender currency in Nigeria; ... promote a sound financial system; act as Banker and provide economic and financial advice to the Federal Government.’ In essence, the apex bank is empowered to direct the country’s monetary policy, among other functions.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Finance is responsible for the fiscal policy, that is managing government’s revenue and expenditure, which includes collecting and disbursing government revenue, formulating policies on taxation, tariffs; preparing and managing the annual budget and preparing annual accounts for ministries, departments and agencies, among others.

Brickbats such as these are sometimes quite necessary to embark upon with the hope that it will help novices like Mayaki to learn a thing or two.

This is just one point I will be bringing out to help herald Mayaki’s ineptitude and to drive some humility into him. It is, after all, not so smart to be arrogant about one’s ignorance.

Hence, as he continues with his vituperations, I will take a critical stance to point out the errors of reasoning and the idiocy of lacing tomfoolery under pretentious prose.

The age-old aphorism ‘an empty vessel makes the loudest noise’ would have gone out of fashion, but nonentities like Mayaki would continue to provide justification for it to hold true again and again that indeed the hollowness of a vessel inevitably makes its ricocheting echoes a nuisance.

_Osagie, an Editor with THISDAY Newspapers (on leave of absence), and public commentator, writes from Benin City._