The decision by Nigeria’s apex bank to relocate five of its departments from Abuja to Lagos in the middle of January 2024 sparked considerable uproar. Some Northern politicians and groups went so far as to threaten that such a move could have political implications for President Bola Tinubu’s second-term ambition.
An internal memo obtained by InfomediaNG reveals that the Cardoso-led team has decided to decongest the Abuja headquarters.
In ordinary circumstances, the apex bank should have the liberty to restructure its organization by the law that established it.
However, the entire process became highly politicized by the political class, mostly from the North region.
One might wonder about the cause of the uproar surrounding the relocation of five out of 29 departments to Lagos, especially considering that all commercial banks in Nigeria have their headquarters there, except Jaiz Bank, which moved to Abuja in November 2022.
To better understand, here is the organizational structure of the CBN and examine the specific departments that have been moved to Lagos.
Directorates
There are five directorates in the organizational structure of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). They are are:
- Governor’s Directorate
- Operations Directorate
- Economic Policy Directorate
- Corporate Services Directorate, and
- Financial System Stability Directorate
Departments
Here is a list of all the departments of CBN and where they are located:
Lagos:
- Consumer Protection department
- Banking Supervision department
- Financial Policy and Regulation
- Payments System Management department
- Other Financial Institutions Supervision department
Abuja office:
- Financial System Strategy or FSS 2020
- Corporate Secretariat:
- Strategy Management
- FSS 2020
- FSS 2020
- FSS 2020
- FSS 2020
- Risk Management
- Internal Audit
- FSS 2020
- FSS 2020
- Special Duties
- Capacity Development
- Human Resources
- Finance
- Research
- Financial Markets
- FSS 2020: in Abuja
- Information Technology
- Reserve Management
- Legal Services
- Monetary Policy
- Trade & Exchange, and
- Statistics department
Each of the departments is headed by a director. They report to the head of their directorate.
Criticisms for and against the move
While lawmakers from the North in the National Assembly, along with the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and other interest groups from the region, have described the move as political and designed to harm Northern interests, former CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi stated that he would have made a similar decision to the one Cardoso took during his tenure if he had had enough time.
“Moving certain functions to the Lagos office ( which is bigger than the Abuja head office) is an eminently sensible move.”
As of the time of publication, we have learned that 1,500 employees from the affected five departments have already resumed at the Lagos office.