Controversy trails CBN’s decision to relocate key departments to Lagos

By Mariam Abeeb

There is a growing controversy over plans by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the leadership of Dr Yemi Cardoso to decongest the headquarters of the bank located at the Central Business District of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT)by relocating some key departments to the Lagos office.

To decongest the headquarters of the apex bank, key departments will be transferred from Abuja to Lagos, its former headquarters. A total of 1,533 members of staff of the bank are expected to be affected.

The departments penciled down for relocation by the CBN governor are: Banking Supervision; Other Financial Institutions Supervision; Consumer Protection Department; Payment System Management Department and Financial Policy Regulations Department.

CBN, in a circular by its Director of Human Resources Department, conveyed its plans to decongest its head office in Abuja.

The circular noted that the decision was prompted by safety concerns, increased health and accident risks, and the need to comply with building regulations, following repeated warnings from the facility manager and recommendations from the Committee on Decongestion of the CBN Head Office Building.

The circular reads: “This is to notify all staff members at the CBN Head Office that we have initiated a decongestion action plan designed to optimize the operational environment of the Bank. This initiative aims to ensure compliance with building safety standards and enhance the efficient utilization of our office space.

“This action is necessitated by several factors, including the need to align the Bank’s structure with its functions and objectives, redistribute skills to ensure a more even geographical spread of talent and comply with building regulations, as indicated by repeated warnings from the Facility Manager, and the findings and recommendations of the Committee on Decongestion of the CBN Head Office Building.”

Our reporter gathered that the move has caused disquiet among CBN staff.
Reacting to the development, Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor of the apex bank, has responded to reports of internal “disquiet” among CBN staffers following the management’s decision to move certain departments to the CBN Lagos office.

According to him, the CBN’s Lagos office was inaugurated 12 years ago during his tenure as deputy governor, but the facility has been underutilized.
He noted that the relocation addresses the overstaffing challenges in the Abuja headquarters, where the staff count exceeds recommended health and safety limits.

Moghalu noted that the decision is logical because affected departments primarily oversee market entities situated in Lagos.
“I don’t see any serious basis for such ‘disquiet.’ A new Lagos Office for the Bank was completed and inaugurated about 12 years ago while I was at the Bank. As far as I can remember, it was under-utilized,” he tweeted.

“Meanwhile, the numbers of staff in the Abuja HQ are vastly over the health and safety limits of the building. Moreover, the market entities supervised by the Departments that will move to Lagos are mostly in Lagos. So what’s the problem? Seems a rational decision to me.”

Also, a Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), in a statement, said the decision by CBN directly smacks of the notoriously petty politics that go on in some states, whereby new governors move state universities to their local government areas.

HURIWA said it makes no logical sense to give a reason for attempting to decongest the Abuja headquarters of the CBN as a reason for transferring departments of the CBN to Lagos when that same reason of over-congestion of the entire Lagos state was the fundamental reason why the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja was set up in the first place by law.

The rights group said the decision by the new CBN chief is tantamount to disrespecting section 298 of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended), which states unambiguously that the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja shall be the capital of the Federation and seat of government of the Federation.

HURIWA national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, argued that the enabling Act that set up the CBN prescribes the legal functions to include that it is the official Banker of the government of the Federation, which emphatically means that the CBN must be domiciled wherever the seat of government is located by law, which for now is Abuja.

HURIWA said it is a fallacy to say that some departments must be domiciled in Lagos because of the puerile and laughable reason that most banks have their headquarters in Lagos, as if the CBN is subservient or is supposed to follow the operational plans of commercial banks.

“We think Mr. Cardoso, the Lagos man, may be seeing his designation as governor just like that of elected political office of a governor, which is why he is trying to experiment with the unethical practice of some governors in some states who, upon getting inaugurated, decide in a thoughtless and whimsical manner to relocate long-established state-owned universities from where they were originally located to their own side of the state, as if to say the state is their personal property.

The decision or plot to relocate departments of CBN to Lagos is politically motivated and must never be allowed to happen, or else we will wake up one morning to hear that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has moved the state house back to Lagos, which by law stopped being the Federal capital territory the moment Abuja became the FCT by the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida military regime in the early 1990s,” the group said.

HURIWA also faulted the plan to relocate the departments to Lagos because the headquarters of banks are in Lagos when in actual facts those commercial banks should have been asked to set up their corporate or administrative offices in Abuja by virtue of the fact that Abuja by law is the FCT of Nigeria.