A former presidential candidate and All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has urged the federal government to jettison the free float of the Naira policy as advised by the Bretton Woods institutions.
He instead urged the government to adopt a Nigerian traditionally managed float system and to allocate Nigeria’s forex and domestic resources for the nation’s economic and national priorities.
The former presidential candidate also asked the Nigerian government to stop heeding the advice of Brettonwoods institutions, who, he said, have continuously misadvised the country to devalue its currency for about 38 years.
The Bretton Woods institutions include the World Bank group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Olawepo-Hashim stated this against the backdrop of the seeming free fall of the Naira. Since the floating of the Naira, Nigeria’s currency has been depreciating, pushing the rate to about N1900 to one United States Dollar some days ago.
However, in a statement by his media office in Abuja, Olawepo-Hashim said “It would be delusional to manage Nigeria’s foreign exchange regime with the expectation that the market would correct itself when the Nigeria market is controlled by different criminal gangs.”
He added that, “It is also time for real Central Bankers to assume control of the Central Bank rather than commercial bankers and even elements at the fringes of commercial banking who have hijacked the management of our monetary policies in the past two decades.”
He stated this against the backdrop of allegations that some banks and their chief executives are foreign exchange speculators who allegedly warehouse large volumes of foreign currencies with a view to trading with them at higher rates.
Olawepo-Hashim said “No serious nation in the world would continue to manage its affairs on the basis of failed recommendations by officials of Brettonwoods institutions who have consistently misadvised Nigeria to continuously devalue its currency for about 38 years.”
He added that “My generation stoutly resisted these packages in the great Anti-SAP revolts of 1989. The present variant of the market allocation is the most extreme ever experienced which is seeing naira exchange at N1900 to a dollar compared to N8 to a dollar which we resisted fiercely in 1989.”
He also maintained that having removed subsidy on Petroleum products with all the very hard consequences, it is bad Economic planning to allow naira to go on the free fall as devaluation would continuously erode any fiscal gain of subsidy removal necessitating another round of subsidy and subsidy removal which the economy at 32% inflation cannot absorb.
Olawepo-Hashim also emphasized that the much sought after investors whether local or foreign would be hard to find in a season of currency volatility and high inflation eroding purchasing power of consumers, and therefore called for an urgent need to stabilise the economy and tame volatility through “Common sense Economics.”
