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CBN reshuffles key officers as world economies brace up for digital currency

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KELVIN EGERUE

Central Banks around the world are waking up to digital currency and are creating framework for its deployment so observed the World Economic forum in Davos, Switzerland.

  It said in Davos that in the past six months have been a wake-up call for some central bank policy-makers. Central bank digital currency (CBDC) has risen to prominence as a potential solution to multiple challenges such as financial inclusion and payment‑system efficiency.

This came on the heels of revelation by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday that  it has redeployed some of its directors ahead of major developments.

Those redeployed are Mr. Yusuf Philip Yila, a Director with the Bank and the Managing Director, NIRSAL Microfinance Bank (NMFB) to the position of Director, Development Finance Department, with effect from today, Friday, January 24, 2020.

Other movements announced by the management include the redeployment of Mr. Kofo Salam-Alada from the Consumer Protection Department to the Legal Services Department as well as the movement of Mr. Samuel Okojere from the Payment System Management to the banking Services Department, to replace Mr. Dipo Fatokun, who retired from the services of the Bank in December 2019.

The CBN Management also approved the appointment of Mr. Clement Buari as Director, Strategy Management Department; Haruna Mustafa, Director, Consumer Protection; Bello Hassan, Director, Other Financial Institutions’ Supervision Department; Dr. Ozoemena Nnaji, Director, Trade and Exchange Department; and Mr. Musa Itopa Jimoh as Director, Payment System Management. Meanwhile, Mr. Abubakar Abdullahi Kure, has also been appointed Director and Acting Managing Director of the NIRSAL Microfinance Bank.

Yila succeeds Dr. Mudashiru Olaitan, who retires from the bank on January 26, 2020, having reached the statutory retirement age.

Born on November 20, 1972, Yila, joined the services of the Central Bank of Nigeria in June 2011 from Oando Plc where he was General Manager, Operations for the downstream business.

 But the World Economic Forum not observed that due in part to the market-moving nature of central bank announcements; the majority of research and experimentation is done independently, behind closed doors. It said “For the first time, the World Economic Forum gathered insights from central bank researchers, global policy makers, international organisations and experts from over 40 institutions to create the CBDC Policy‑Maker Toolkit. Blockchain and academic experts from around the world also contributed to the design and content to help policy‑makers within central banks confidently evaluate whether CBDC is the right fit for their economy and guide them through the evaluation, design and deployment process.

“Given the critical roles central banks play in the global economy, any central bank digital currency implementation, including potentially with blockchain technology, will have a profound impact domestically and internationally,” said Sheila Warren, Head of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology at the World Economic Forum.

 “It is imperative that central banks proceed cautiously, with a rigorous analysis of the opportunities and challenges posed.” Over the past year, the Forum’s Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology team captured lessons from current research and pilot projects, while acknowledging privacy and anonymisation, to avoid potentially harmful market signalling. The framework is intended to help accelerate critical and rigorous analysis of CBDC and lay common groundwork for central banks to support stable, efficient and inclusive global systems that might include CBDC.

 “We worked with almost a dozen central banks as well as prominent economists and financial industry leaders to create a common approach for evaluating and designing CBDC around the world,” said Ashley Lannquist, Project Lead, at the World Economic Forum.

“The toolkit is the first of its kind to provide a concise summary of the key issues for policy-makers considering general-purpose or wholesale CBDC.”

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