But you wonder whether the Naira has become a convertible currency, which the grain merchants will readily use to procure beans. Every day now, we get to know those who do not want the Naira to leave the intensive care unit where the IMF agents are hovering around for an undertaker's job. The formal announcement came when the Minister of Agriculture addressed reporters after the FEC weekly meeting. The presumption therefore was that the news emanated from the deliberations of the cabinet ministers. However the decision was arrived at, it certainly calls to question the quality of debate at the FEC meetings.
Meetings are an interesting phenomenon.
The tone of interaction established at the beginning by the chairman of a meeting impinges on the quality of discussion and invariably the soundness of its decisions. If the chairman brooks no dissent, no matter how well informed, he will down the road be talking to himself at meetings but still be deluded that those present are with him. Inwardly, those same members who are nodding in apparent concurrence will be asking themselves whether the chairman does not know that he is off tangent. In such a circumstance, even when the chairman calls for comments, those present will only re-echo what the chairman has said, because that is what he wants to hear. This the chairman mistakes as a validation of his position.