Pres Muhammadu Buhari has declared that he was yet to be
convinced that Nigeria and its people will derive any tangible benefit
from an official devaluation of the Naira. The president who was speaking at an interactive meeting with
Nigerians living in Kenya said, while export-driven economies could
benefit from devaluation of their currencies, devaluation will only
result in further inflation and hardship for the poor and middle class
Nigerians because of the country’s import-dependent economy.
He added
that he has no intention of bringing further hardship on the country’s
poor who have suffered enough already. While many have argued that the naira needs to be allowed to
depreciate to reflect the market value, given that while it officially
sells for N197, the parallel market rate is around N300, the president
believes devaluing the naira would amount to killing it, his spokesman,
Garba Shehu said in a press statement released yesterday. The President added that he had no intention of bringing further
hardship on the country’s poor who, he said, have suffered enough
already.
Likening devaluing the Naira to having it “killed”, President Buhari
said that proponents of devaluation will have to work much harder to
convince him that ordinary Nigerians will gain anything from it.
The President also rejected suggestions that the Central Bank of
Nigeria should resume the sale of foreign exchange to Bureaux de Change
(BDCs), saying that the Bureau de Change business had become a scam and a
drain on the economy. “We had just 74 of the bureaux in 2005, now they have grown to about 2,800,” President Buhari noted.
He alleged that some bank and government officials used surrogates to
run the BDCs and prosper at public expense by obtaining foreign
exchange from government at official rates and selling it at much higher
rates.
“We will use our foreign exchange for industry, spare parts and the development of needed infrastructure.
“We don’t have the Dollars to give to the BDCs. Let them go and get
it from wherever they can, other than the Central Bank,” President
Buhari told the gathering. The President reaffirmed his conviction that about a third of
petroleum subsidy payments under the previous administration were bogus.“They just stamped papers and collected our foreign exchange,” he said. The President appealed to Nigerians studying abroad to bear with his
administration as it strives to address the challenges they are facing
as a result of new foreign exchange measures.