- He said floating of the naira “is not something you do haphazardly
The Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, mentioned during his appearance on Arise TV on Monday morning that, if he were Nigeria’s president, he would have depreciated the nation’s currency to N600.
Obi expressed dissatisfaction with the prevalent use of the US dollar as an unofficial medium of exchange in the country, emphasizing his intention to impose substantial penalties on individuals who frequently transact in dollars rather than using the national currency, the naira.
“Nobody floats what you don’t have supply of,” he criticised the Tinubu administration’s purported floating of the naira.
He pointed out that the new management team must think through every policy including looking at the “exchange rate, inflation” and other key policies in the area.
He said floating of the naira “is not something you do haphazardly.
“Nobody floats his currency without adequate supply.”
He said rather than haphazardly floating the naira, “we should have worked on criminals and excesses in our foreign exchange regime.”
He explained that the naira was over valued and was increasingly under pressure because of under supply and the dollarisation of the country’s economy.
“We should have devalued to about N600 while managing to deal with supplies and deal with the issues that control the exchange rate.”
According to him, “what controls the exchange rate is your reserve and what controls your reserve is your export.”
