Why Eco is a joke, not in Nigeria’s interest, by experts

Economic experts have cautioned Nigerians holding the bated breath and anxiously waiting for the much-hyped Eco currency implementation this year 2020, as a common currency for the ECOWAS sub-region.
They have been advised to drop their apprehensions because the declaration by some ECOWAS countries remains a fluke and a joke, as conditions are not yet ripe for the implementation of the single currency for the region, at least not in the foreseeable two years.
They also warned that Nigeria hastily signing to the new planned currency means surrendering her fiscal and monetary sovereignty, including her foreign reserves which are more than 60 per cent of the entire sub-region to the ECOWAS Central Bank, which structure and form nobody knows yet.
One of the experts who called for the dousing of tension is frontline economist, Professor Godwin Owoh, the Executive Chairman of the Society for Analytical Economics and former advisor to former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, while at the CBN.
Speaking exclusively to The Guardian, yesterday, the technocrat declared that evidence indicates that the basic requirement for the convergence of the sub-region currencies, which is the audit and verification of the various ECOWAS Central Banks’ accounts has not happened.
He noted: “I know this of a fact, that even Nigeria that is the leading stakeholders in this project has not had its CBN accounts audited and verified in the past four years. And it takes a minimum of two years to achieve this. So I don’t see any magic happening with the Eco implementation this year. How do you converge when you don’t know your individual countries’ balance. At best what could happen is to float a spirit currency among members, which is not the same thing as a convergent currency.
“The attempt to have a common currency has been on before the year 2000 and it has suffered multiple postponements because members have consistently failed to meet the convergent criteria, with Nigeria always leading in the breach. So what I expected ECOWAS to do was to have reduced the criteria to say one: integrity and transparency as it has been so difficult for countries to meet the about four criteria.”
Owoh then chided the Nigerian Finance Minister, Mrs. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed for dithering on the truth by simply saying Nigeria was not ready then to say Nigeria was studying the development.