Ekiti Governor asks Buhari to devalue Naira

He said "With the gap between the official rate of N199 and open market rate of over N400 to one dollar, the Naira has already been devalued. Therefore, President Muhammadu Buhari must stop deceiving himself and short-changing Nigerians, especially States and Local Councils in the country with his Forex Policy.”

He also advised Buhari to sit back at home and solve the current economic situation in the country, rather than spending over $1m on travels.

The Sun reports that Fayose said “President Buhari has travelled to 24 countries in eight months, and will be spending 16 out of the 29 days in February outside the country, with over $500,000 being spent on estacode while the Presidential Air Fleet, which includes fueling of the planes and allowances for crew members is said to be in the range of $500,000.

“The President’s entourage obviously collect their travel allowances in dollars on official rate of N199 and come back to Nigeria to change it at the open market rate of N400. That must be the reason they encourage the President to be junketing abroad when life is becoming unbearable for Nigerians.”

He also said “The situation is such that Nigeria gets say $2 billion revenue in a month, calculates the $2 billion revenue on the basis of the official CBN rate of N199 and share the revenue among the three tiers of government.

“In elementary economics, the implication is that when revenue is calculated based on N199 to one dollar and the federal government will be declaring say revenue of N400 billion to be shared by the three tiers of government, the value of revenue that should have been shared will be over N800 billion at the open market rate of N400 to one dollar.”

The Ekiti Governor said “Meanwhile, the three tiers of government pay salaries to workers on the basis of N199 per dollar while the workers pay for goods and services where prices are determined by the open market rate of N400 to one dollar.

“Also, Nigeria is now faced with a situation whereby funds are obtained from the official forex market (at lower rates) and diverted to other markets and sold at a higher rate by forex dealing banks and users, who make billions of naira profit just for doing almost nothing.”

“Therefore, the reality that we must all accept is that we must allow the forces of demand and supply to determine the value of our currency, not administrative fiat. Most importantly, the government does not have the reserves to keep the naira-dollar rate at its official level.

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“The Naira must therefore be devalued. Anything other than this will mean that we are deceiving ourselves with forced foreign exchange rates and it is my position that this regime of deceit must stop,” Fayose said.

The Ekiti state Governor has undefinedsaying Muhammadu Buhari-led government should focus the economic crisis confronting the nation, instead of going about grandstanding on a TSA policy.