Buy Made-in-Nigeria Goods to Strengthen Naira – Tinubu tells Nigerians

Joy ChukwuMarch 23, 20242 Mins read306

President Bola Tinubu, in a statement delivered on Friday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, urged Nigerians to support locally-made goods and services to maintain the recent improvements in the value of the naira against foreign currencies.

Calling on Nigerians to collaborate by reporting any activities that may affect the Naira, Ngelale cautioned that despite the recent uptick, there is still work to be done.

Since assuming office 10 months ago, Tinubu’s decisions to halt petrol subsidies and unify foreign exchange rates triggered a ripple effect of instability in the Naira’s value, leading to widespread hardship among Nigerians and sparking massive protests due to soaring food prices.

The exchange rate, which stood at around N460 per USD when the president took office, surged to N1,900 in the black market by February 2024. However, there has been a recent uptick in the naira’s strength against the US dollar, with an official market exchange rate of N1,382 per dollar recorded on Thursday.

Ngelale argued that a stronger naira is necessary for working citizens as it would complement the new minimum wage upon implementation. He said:

“I’m confident that Nigerians have witnessed the strengthening of the Nigerian Naira against the United States Dollar. 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 why His Excellency President Bola Tinubu has approved a series of interventions to ensure that we see a mass strengthening of the Nigerian Naira against all other global currencies.

“One, President Bola Tinubu, wants to communicate very clearly to our people 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.

“There is an intentionality that we must have on this issue, and 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.”

He attributed the recent strengthening of the naira against the US dollar to collaborative efforts with the Central Bank and other agencies, along with measures in “dealing decisively with sharp practices on certain crypto-currency trading platforms, within the parallel market of the foreign exchange ecosystem.”

To complement these efforts, the presidential spokesman said Tinubu is appealing to Nigerians to blow the whistle wherever they see any of these sharp practices taking place and communicate with the agencies that deal with these issues directly, stressing that it’s a collective responsibility to combat them.

Ngelale also warned that if a grip was not placed on the value of the Naira, then the efforts on the minimum wage negotiations, which he disclosed are ongoing, would be a “moot point. See more…

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