With a population estimated at about 140 million, Nigeria is the largest country in Africa and one-sixth of the black population in the world. Nigeria is the 8th largest oil producer and has the 6th largest deposit of natural gas in the world. Currently, barely 40 percent of the arable land is under cultivation.
The policy approach used by the Bank of Mauritius in the face of incoming capital inflows has also been validated by the recent Article IV Mission of the IMF. The conduct of monetary policy has to be freed from sectoral considerations. It is not the role of the Central Bank to support a particular sector at the expense of other sectors.