The
Governor of Ekiti State has slammed the economic policies of President
Muhammadu Buhari saying the naira has already been devalued.
Ayo Fayose/Muhammadu Buhari
The highly outspoken Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has
called for the devaluation of the nation’s currency, the Naira, saying; “With
the gap between the official rate of N199 and open market rate of over
N400 to one dollar, Naira has already been devalued. Therefore,
President Mohammadu Buhari must stop deceiving himself and
short-changing Nigerians, especially States and Local Councils in the
country with his Forex Policy.”
Fayose, who said there was no time in the history of Nigeria that
the gap between dollar official rate and open market rate was more than
N200, pointed out that it made no economic sense for the Federal
Government to be calculating the country’s revenue on the basis of the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) official rate of N199 to a dollar while
States and Local Councils that are sharing the revenue with the Federal
Government run their businesses at the open market rate of over N400 to
one dollar, thereby causing business to be folding up by the day and
prices of goods skyrocketing everyday.
Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media to the
governor, Lere Olayinka, in a statement issued in Ado-Ekiti on
Sunday, quoted the governor as saying that apart from breeding
corruption through round tripping or foreign exchange arbitrage,
Nigerians are also being duped and middle class Nigerians, the main
people that grows the country’s economy are being decimated.
The governor said President Buhari was applying his 1984 failed
economic policy in which prices of goods were fixed not minding the cost
of supply, such that essential commodities like milk and sugar became
scarce and Nigerians were made to line up in the sun to buy rationed
commodities.
He urged the President to pay more attention to the ailing economy
of the country instead of junketing around the world, wasting $1 million
per foreign trip, saying; “President Buhari has traveled to 24
countries in eight months, and will be spending 16 out of the 29 days in
February outside the country, with over $500,000 being spent on
estacode while the Presidential Air Fleet, which includes fueling of the
planes and allowances for crew members is said to be in the range of
$500,000.
“The President’s entourage obviously collect their travel
allowances in dollars on official rate of N199 and come back to Nigeria
to change it at the open market rate of N400. That must be the reason
they encourage the President to be junketing abroad when life is
becoming unbearable for Nigerians.”
The governor said; “The situation is such that Nigeria gets say
$2 billion revenue in a month, calculates the $2 billion revenue on
the basis of the official CBN rate of N199 and share the revenue among
the three tiers of government.
“In elementary economics, the implication is that when revenue
is calculated based on N199 to one dollar and the federal government
will be declaring say revenue of N400 billion to be shared by the three
tiers of government, the value of revenue that should have been
shared will be over N800 billion at the open market rate of N400 to one
dollar.
“Meanwhile, the three tiers of government pay salaries to
workers on the basis of N199 per dollar while the workers pay for goods
and services which prices are determined by the open market rate of N400
to one dollar.
“Also, Nigeria is now faced with a situation whereby funds are
obtained from the official Forex market (at lower rates) and diverted to
other markets and sold at a higher rate by Forex dealing banks and
users, who make billions of naira profit just for doing almost
nothing.
“Therefore, the reality that we must all accept is that we must
allow the forces of demand and supply to determine the value of our currency,
not administrative fiat. Most importantly, the government does not have
the reserves to keep the naira-dollar rate at its official level.
“The Naira must therefore be devalued. Anything other than this
will mean that we are deceiving ourselves with forced foreign exchange rates and it is my position that this regime of deceit must stop.”
