It is evident that they were ignored on occasion, wilfully or otherwise. One of our central aims in drafting the Code is for it to be principles-based rather than rulesbased. There are a number of reasons why this is so but, for me, an important reason is that the more prescriptive the Code is, the easier it is to get around.
It is noteworthy that fiscal dominance has been one of the sore points of monetary management in Nigeria, as it has tended to undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy. For most of the 1990s, for instance, the major source of general macroeconomic instability was the rising fiscal deficits of the Federal Government, financed mainly by the Central Bank.