The Presidency has revealed that President Ahmed Bola Tinubus administration is working on policies that will strengthen the nation’s currency, the Naira.
Special Adviser to the President on Economic Matters, Dr. Tope Fasua, disclosed this during the Cowries to Cash lecture and lunch yesterday, in Abuja.
There has been a steady rise in the value of the Naira in the past few days and Fasua said the trend is expected to continue as a result of policies being implemented by the government.
While positing that the fall in the value of the currency of a country is a sign of conquest, he said: When you want to destroy a country, destroy its currency first. He cautioned Nigerians who are hoarding foreign currencies with the hope that the local currency would continue to fall, warning that the policies of the government would shock them.
Fasua, who represented the Vice-President, Kashim Shettima, at the even,t said: For those who are speculating and praying and wishing that the currency would become nonsense, I believe that the policies are being rolled out by the central bank and the government that I serve, led by the President, will shock some of them.
He said there was going to be some tectonic re-organisation of the banking sector, to make the naira more stable and stronger.
In his keynote address at the event, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Dr. Olayemi Cardoso, who was represented by the Director of Banking Supervision, Mustapha Haruna, said the country was going through economic challenges occasioned by a number of macro-economic issues linked to some of the lingering impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
The CBN Governor said the book (Cowries to Cashless) would eloquently capture the evolutionary journey in the history of the CBN, particularly with regards to the phenomenal transformation of the Nigerian payment system in the last two or three decades.
This transformation, Cardoso noted, has been deepened by the implementation of the cashless policy.
Cardoso assured that the CBN would continue to collaborate with the key stakeholders, particularly the fiscal authorities to ensure that it addressed a number of the essential issues and challenges currently facing the country.
