Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, has said members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) would do whatever is necessary to check the country’s persistent inflation.
The CBN’s hawkish stance on inflation had become obvious from the first MPC meeting held in February, when the committee raised the benchmark lending rate by 400 basis points to 22.75 per cent, from 18.75 per cent. It has since been raised to 24.75 per cent.
The CBN boss, who stated this in an interview with the Financial Times on Monday, said this is an indication that interest rates would stay high for as long as necessary to tame inflation.
He told the Financial Times that there was “every indication” that the MPC would “do whatever is necessary” to keep soaring inflation in check.
“They will continue to do what has to be done to ensure that inflation comes down”, Cardoso said.
Meanwhile, ahead of the next MPC meeting scheduled to hold on May 20-21, there are projections of a rate hike from the committee, even as inflation is projected to go higher.
Analysts at Meristem Securities projected an uptick in the headline inflation for April to 34.43 per cent year-on-year (vs. 33.20 per cent YoY reported in March 2024).
Despite the current CBN’s hawkish stance, Cardoso said he hoped that high rates would not be for too long and discourage investment and production.
Noting that raising rates had been essential, he said, “Hiking interest rates has had a dampening effect on the foreign exchange market, so that has begun to moderate. It’s not a zero-sum game. You lose on one side, you get on the other”.
On fluctuations in the naira in recent times, Cardoso said investors, who were likely to exit the economy in response to currency fluctuations were now more comfortable with the market.
Cardoso said further that the apex bank was going to return to orthodox monetary policies.
“Let’s face it: for a long period of time, the CBN did not embrace orthodox monetary policies. We want to go back to using an orthodox method, and it will take us to where we want to go”, he said.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called in Nigeria’s Federal Government to remove what it called implicit fuel and electricity subsidies.
This was contained in a recent report published by the IMF, in which it said the subsidies will take a whooping three per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2024 as against one per cent in 2023.
In the report, the IMF commended the Federal Government for phasing out “costly and regressive energy subsidies”, among others.
It added that this was “critical to creating fiscal space for development spending and strengthening social protection while maintaining debt sustainability”.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu’s administration removed fuel subsidies during his inauguration on May 29, 2023.
Commenting of the fuel subsidy removal, IMF noted that “adequate compensatory measures for the poor were not scaled up promptly and subsequently paused over corruption concerns. Capping pump prices below cost reintroduced implicit subsidies by end-2023 to help Nigerians cope with high inflation and exchange rate depreciation”.
IMF also acknowledged that the price of electricity had tripled for high-use premium consumers on Band A feeders, 15 per cent of the 12 million customers who account for 40 per cent of electricity usage.
Following Nigerians’ agitation for the reversal of the Band A tariff from N206.80 per kilowatt-hour to N68, IMF said “the tariff adjustment will help reduce expenditure on subsidies by 0.1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, while continuing to provide relief to the poor, particularly in rural areas”.
It continued that “once the safety net has been scaled up and inflation subsides, the government should tackle implicit fuel and electricity subsidies”.
The organisation also warned that “With pump prices and tariffs below cost-recovery, implicit subsidy costs could increase to 3 per cent of GDP in 2024 from 1 per cent in 2023. These subsidies are costly and poorly targeted, with higher income groups benefiting more than the vulnerable.
“As inflation subsides and support for the vulnerable is ramped up, costly and untargeted fuel and electricity subsidies should be removed, while, e.g., retaining a lifeline tariff”.
IMF projected that the implicit fuel subsidy could gulp as high as N8.4tn in 2024 from N1.85tn in 2023, N4.4tn in 2022, N1.86tn in 2021 and N89bn in 2020.
The electricity subsidy being paid to customers under Band B, C, D, and E was projected to stand at N540bn by the end of 2024.
The Tide’s source reports that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, have repeatedly debunked claims that the Federal Government was paying fuel subsidies through the back door.
The IMF’s call for the removal of electricity subsidy is coming amid protests from Nigerians who are calling on the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, to return the Band A tariff to the status quo.
For this purpose, the organised labour has threatened to stage a protest on Monday if Adelabu fails to heed their calls.

In response to the directive by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) for Point of Sales (PoS) operators to register with it, the body, the “Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria (AMMBAN)” says it has concluded plans to head to court to address the legality of the directive.
President of the association, Fasasi Sarafadeen, faulted the directive mandating PoS operators to register with the CAC, saying the move had forced the association to go to court to seek a redress.
Sarafadeen said the directive from the CAC violated the provision of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, which “explicitly states that the commission has no jurisdiction over individuals not operating as a company”.
“According to section 863(1) of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2004, the order to enforce CAC directive on individual PoS agents operating under their name is wrong and will be challenged, as it contravenes the Companies and Allied Matters Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, which explicitly states that CAC has no jurisdiction over individuals not operating as a company.
“We shall challenge it legally. The court will have to intervene in the interpretation of the quoted section of the CAMA if individuals operating as a sub-agent (likened to a bank branch) must register with CAC.
“CBN is right, no issue, the memo is clear, it only applies to non-individuals, unlike the Corporate Affairs Commission who generalised. We are in talks with the lawyer representing the association already, and a league of human rights lawyers whom we are not disclosing who they are for now”, he said.
Explaining the categories, he stated that there were two categories of Point-of-Sale agents.
“CAMA only mandates registration of individuals operating as a company. There are two categories of POS agents: individuals and non-individuals. Individual agents operate under their names, such as Musa Caroline or Abubakar Audu, and are typically profiled with financial institutions under their names.
“Non-individual agents, on the other hand, operate under registered or unregistered business names, such as Wale Ventures or Johnson Enterprises.
“It is this second category of agents that the Corporate Affairs Commission can enforce the law on, as they are required to register their business names by the law”, Sarafadeen explained.
He noted that sub-agents are independent branches of a company already registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission.
“Sub agents are not carrying out as an independent company but branches of a company. For example, while commercial banks operate with bank branches across the country, Fintechs (MMO, super agents, and co) operate with a network of sub-agents.
“It is, therefore, lack of knowledge of the workings in a Fintech/agent banking industry to be tagging sub-agents as illegal”, he added.
According to the AMMBAN boss, the CAC should focus its efforts on addressing the high failure rate of registered businesses in Nigeria, rather than enforcing regulations on individual POS agents operating under their names.
“The Corporate Affairs Commission should prioritise addressing the alarming failure rate of registered businesses in Nigeria, rather than targeting sub-agents. With over 4.9 million businesses registered, 50 per cent of which fail every five years, this should be the focus.
“In addition, the Central Bank of Nigeria’s memo specifically addressed non-individual agents, not individual sub-agents, and CAC’s threat to harass sub-agents is unwarranted and excessive”, he added.
He noted that the clampdown on agent banking in the name of CAC registration was not in line with President Bola Tinubu’s renewed Hope agenda, which prioritises job creation and opposes policies that cause unemployment.
“We are aware that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not approved of any policy that will cause unemployment, noting that agent banking has created over 1.9 million jobs in the last few years. Clampdown in the name of CAC registration is not in line with the renewed Hope agenda of Mr. President and we are appealing to Mr. President, the Senate, and the House of reps to intervene as they did for the anti-masses policy of cyber security levy.
“CAC should be concerned about how 50 per cent of registered businesses in Nigeria fail within the first few years, resulting in growing unemployment year-on-year. Rather than embarking on policies that will eradicate entrepreneurs, escalate unemployment, and reverse the gains of financial inclusion in Nigeria”, he stated.
The Federal Government through the Corporate Affairs Commission had issued a two-month registration deadline for Point of Sales companies, to register their agents, merchants, and individuals with the commission in line with legal requirements and the directives of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The agreement was reached during a meeting between Fintechs and the Registrar-General CAC, Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, in Abuja.
CAC said the move would curb kidnapping and payment of ransoms.
According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, there are over 1.9 million PoS terminals deployed by merchants and individuals nationwide.
This new directive came against the backdrop of frequent fraud incidents involving POS terminals and plans to stop trading in cryptocurrency or any virtual currency by the Central Bank of Nigeria. POS terminals accounted for 26.37 per cent of fraud incidents in 2023, according to a fraud report by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc.
Last week, the CBN stopped major fintech firms like Kuda, Opay, PalmPay, and Moniepoint from onboarding new customers and instructed the companies to warn their customers against trading in cryptocurrency or any virtual currency on their apps, threatening to block any accounts found engaging in such activities.
The CBN’s move was linked to an ongoing audit of the Know-Your-Customer process of the fintechs, which have been under scrutiny in recent months over concerns around money laundering and terrorism financing.
Before the CBN’s directive, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had obtained a court order to freeze at least 1,146 bank accounts owned by various individuals and companies allegedly involved in illegal foreign exchange transactions.