UPDATE 2-Nigeria's president tells cenbank to stop providing FX for food

(Adds details, comments)
ABUJA, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu
Buhari has told the central bank to stop providing funding for
food imports, his spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday, a
move that has raised questions about the bank's independence.
Nigeria, which has Africa's biggest economy, is the
continent's top oil producer and relies on crude sales for
around 90% of it foreign exchange. Low oil prices led to a
recession in 2016 from which the country emerged two years ago.
Since Buhari first took office in 2015, Nigeria's central
bank has presided over policies aimed at stimulating growth in
the agricultural sector to reduce dependence on oil. Those
policies included a 2015 ban on access to foreign exchange for
41 items that the bank felt could be produced in Nigeria.
"President Muhammadu Buhari ... disclosed that he has
directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stop providing
foreign exchange for importation of food into the country,"
Tuesday's statement said.
"Don't give a cent to anybody to import food into the
country," Buhari said, according to the statement, which said
that the call was in line with efforts to bring about a "steady
improvement in agricultural production, and attainment of full
food security".
"The foreign reserve will be conserved and utilised strictly
for diversification of the economy, and not for encouraging more
dependence on foreign food import bills."
The latest move comes only weeks after Central Bank Governor
Godwin Emefiele in July said the bank would ban access to
foreign exchange to import milk.
Tuesday's statement prompted many observers to point to the
central bank's status as an independent body.
"The central bank act of 2007 makes it clear that the bank
is independent. It is not supposed to be taking direct
instructions from politicians," said Kingsley Moghalu, who
served as deputy central bank governor from 2009 to 2014.
"The trajectory in this administration is that we have seen
a very clear tendency for the president to direct people.
Increasingly Nigeria's institutions have lost independence,"
said Moghalu, who was a contender in February's presidential
election.
Bismarck Rewane, an economist and the head of Lagos-based
consultancy Financial Derivatives, also said the bank was
supposed to be independent.
A central bank spokesman did not immediately respond to
phone calls and text messages seeking comment.
Buhari has been a vocal supporter of such restrictions and
one of his first moves after his re-election in February was to
reappoint the central bank governor. Rewane said a curb on foreign exchange for food imports
could backfire after Buhari last month signed up to the African
Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). That deal seeks to
create a continent-wide free trade zone where tariffs on most
goods would be eliminated. "At this point in time these rules will be manipulated in
the interest of smugglers and their accomplices," said Rewane.
Import controls on rice, imposed even as local farmers fail
to meet demand, have kept prices artificially high and led to
smuggling from neighbouring Benin into Nigeria.