Nigeria, April 6 -- Next year, the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) enabling law turns twenty. Its scorecard is mixed. As the product of a democratic civilian government (the 1999 statute that it replaced was largely based on earlier military-era decrees), the CBN Act 2007 sought to modernise the legal framework for central banking in Nigeria, by strengthening the apex bank's institutional independence, and aligning Nigeria's monetary framework with global best practices. While the bank's goals have remained unchanged in its enabling act's several restatements, the 2007 Act provides clearer policy orientation toward price stability as a primary goal and explicitly strengthened the CBN's independence.

Eight years of the Buhari administrati...