#OccupyCBN is Hired to Frustrate Our Forex Policy, CBN Says

• #OccupyCBN is Hired to Frustrate Our Forex Policy

The Central Bank of Nigeria on Wednesday night said some paid groups are being hired by certain interests to frustrate its flexible foreign exchange policy.

The apex bank in a statement issued by its Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, described one of the groups as “Wailing wailers.”

He said the group, which goes by the hashtag #OccupyCBN, had threatened to protest efforts of the apex bank to conserve scarce foreign exchange.

Okorafor in the statement described them variously as “paid agents of some selfish interest groups” and “enemies of the Nigerian economy.”

The statement reads in part, “No amount of blackmail will make the CBN allow a practice whereby our farmers and industrialists who have invested heavily and employed our youths in the production of Nigerian-made rice, fish, industrial starch, palm produce, wheat, toothpicks and wines, would be made to close their farms and factories again.

“They want the CBN to give out the nation’s scarce foreign exchange to their sponsors to import all manner of foreign goods and dump them on our markets, thereby frustrating the good work our own farmers and manufacturers have begun.

“They want the CBN to fold its arms and allow currency speculators to drive the naira down to a level at which it will be easy for their paymasters to buy up and take control of the Nigerian economy.

“They have even gone to the extent of making false allegations that some banks are having trouble, just to trigger panic in the financial system. These will not happen.”

Meanwhile, activities on the twitter handle of OccupyCBN are mellowed, with just two tweets both dated September 1, 2012, the same day it joined twitter.

The group has a paltry 25 followers and just one following.