From President Bola Tinubu yesterday came a plea to Nigerians to deliberately patronise home-made goods and services with a view to sustaining the current positive showing of the Naira at the foreign exchange market.
He said while the fair development around Naira’s exchange value did not yet call for celebration, more work and efforts were required sustain the gains.
He also appealed to the generality of Nigerians to blow the whistle on those undermining the national currency.
Tinubu, speaking via his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, at a State House briefing, stated that the government is diligently working to strengthen the naira, aiming to ease life for Nigerians with the implementation of the new minimum wage.
The Naira has appreciated at the foreign exchange market over the last few days, gaining N18 to close at 1,382/$ at the official market on Thursday.
“This is clearly the direction all of us have wanted to head and we are very sober to the fact that this is no time to rest or to clap.
“This is a time to deepen our efforts to dig in and to work harder, which is why His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has approved a series of interventions to ensure that we see a mass strengthening of the Nigerian Naira against all other global currencies,” Ngelale said.
According to him, Tinubu wants Nigerians to understand that “there has never been a more important time in our history to actively agree together that we will patronise and purchase made in Nigeria products across all value chains, across all sectors.”
Continuing, he said: “There is an intentionality that we must have on this issue that we want a strong currency. We want the spending power of our people to go up. We want every Naira and kobo we earn to be more valuable, not just here, but when we travel abroad. The way to achieve that is by doing just this.
“In addition to that, His Excellency Mr. President, beyond the appeal to Nigerians to actively and intentionally make that decision every day to patronise made-in-Nigeria products and services across the board, he is also wanting to ensure that Nigerians fully understand that the momentum that we are now seeing, with respect to the strengthening of our currency, is not going to slow down.”
Ngelale attributed the rise in the exchange rate of the Naira to recent efforts “in dealing decisively with sharp practices on certain crypto-currency trading platforms, dealing decisively with sharp practices within the parallel market of the foreign exchange ecosystem.
“These things are now yielding fruit.
“What we now will need to see is an active effort on the part of our people to blow the whistle wherever they see any of these sharp practices taking place, to communicate with the agencies that deal with these issues directly and understanding that this is not a government versus malign actors issue.
“This is a Federal Republic of Nigeria versus malign actors issue, and the activities of these actors negatively impact everybody seated in this room and everybody watching this broadcast and all Nigerians, both at home and abroad. So all of us have to take up the mantle and agree that we will collaborate together to deal with these issues.
“He is also ensuring that we bring a sustainable strength to the currency so that when we talk about a new minimum wage, because many of our people have asked, you know government officials about when the new minimum wage is coming in, those negotiations are ongoing.
“But what we do not want is a situation in which the minimum wage continues to be what it has always been in the history of our country, which is a moving goalpost.”
He warned that the proposed minimum wage would result in nothing for workers “if we do not get a firm grip on the value of our currency and it continues to be a volatile, devaluing asset.”
He added: “And so we are focused on ensuring that yes, we arrive at a new minimum wage that states can afford, and that will deal with all of the needs of Nigerian families across the country.
“But we also want to ensure that what we peg it at something that is sustainable over a number of years based on the long term, you know, stability that we want to bring to the Nigerian Naira with the interventions we’re presently making.”
Ngelale also said the federal government hoped to save N5 billion quarterly through the imposition of a three-month ban on all foreign trips funded by public money for ministers, heads of government agencies, and other officials.
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The ban, which takes effect from April 1, 2024, is aimed at reducing the rising expenses incurred by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) on international travel and ensuring that cabinet members and heads of MDAs focus on their respective mandates for effective service delivery.
“So the President is doing everything he can to ensure that he steps in to ease the burden on families while also ensuring that he holds the public sector and the federal government of Nigeria accountable to prudent spending, ensuring that we cut down drastically on travel expenditures, ensuring that with the temporary ban that is being put in place from April 1 on all but unnecessary foreign travel, we’re expecting to save over N5 billion per quarter,” the President’s spokesman said.
“This is going to be one out of several initiatives the President is taking to ensure that we reduce waste in the public sector in such a way that we can actually steer these very needed recurrent resources into the hands of those who are doing important work on behalf of the Nigerian people.
“For example, Nigerians are well aware that judicial officers in the country are going to finally have internationally competitive pay rates, salary skills, which is very important for us, very strategic in the sense that we can dramatically reduce the impact that corruption has always played in the judiciary, which has an impact on not just the ability of Nigerians to get effective justice in the country, but also to ensure that businesses who we are now asking around the world to invest in Nigeria have a judicial system that they can trust with respect to any litigation that could arise from business practice in the country.
“The effects are huge and the President is taking a multi-sectoral and comprehensive approach to ensuring that we bring prudence to government expenditure at a time when we are restructuring the economy of the Federation in such a way that sectors that are employing our people, that are empowering our people are those sectors that will be able to more easily access lending both commercially and from public sector sources.”
Ngelale similarly dwelt on other government efforts to reshape the economy, including the Presidential conditional grant scheme under which over one million Nigerian businesses will be financially empowered with up to N50000 per nano enterprise, which they will not have to pay back.
Beneficiaries are spread across the 774 local government areas of the country.
Besides over N150 billion is being disbursed from the Bank of Industry and Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency while single-digit interest rate loans of up to N2 million are also coming the way of thousands of small and medium scale enterprises across the federation.
Ngelale added that President Tinubu has prioritised intervention of the sum of N75b to 75 industries and manufacturing companies with staff strength of over 1,000 workers to ensure necessary support is given to such firms, thereby expanding their hiring strength.
“We want to ensure that those industries and sectors that are massively employing our people are those industries that are prioritised concerning government intervention, which is why the President has approved over N75 billion to be dispersed to 75 large-scale manufacturers across all states of the Federation.
“These are going to be manufacturers who employ over 1,000 Nigerians in each of their facilities and industries. We are going to ensure that they have the support that they need on the large scale so that Nigerian families who rely on these large-scale businesses are protected.
“We want to see our large-scale industries not just refuse to fire people, but actively increase and expand their hiring at this difficult time.”
