Efforts by the Federal Government to ameliorate the impacts of the economic hardship on Nigerians are already yielding results, says Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Onanuga, in a chat with Cable noted that many Nigerians have been complaining about the hardship due to lack of money.
While listing initiatives rolled out by the President and some State Governors to ensure people have food to eat as well as money to buy other basic needs, he said: “The opposition can say nothing has worked but we can see some light already.”
“For instance, the foreign exchange market is being stabilised. In the last one week or so, sanity has been restored in all these crazy movements of the naira in the black market.
“On the food situation, from the reports we are gathering across the country, prices of foodstuffs are not going up, they are going down.
“The major problem is that people don’t have enough disposable income. What the government is doing, at least to all federal workers is to pay them N35,000 up till April. Even some states are also giving wage awards.
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“It is clear that many people are crying about food prices because they don’t have enough money to spend. That is why the federal government and some states are making wage awards.
“Look at Ogun state. The governor has rolled out palliatives worth N5 billion for households in the state. Lagos state has also announced a series of measures. In Ekiti, the state government also announced N5,000 palliatives for 10,000 households.
“In Borno State, the governor recently raised the number of households being targeted for palliatives from 300,000 to 400,000. I can go on and on.
“Most of them are making efforts to ensure that the workers have money to survive while others are also assisting the citizens.
“The federal government is making efforts to boost food supply. We just issued a statement recently to tell Nigerians the state of government’s effort on the 2,000 metric tonnes of grains and the 60,000 expected from rice millers.
“The Nigerian Customs is also selling seized 25kg bags of rice at N10,000. A lot of things are being done to cushion the effects of the hardship and make sure Nigerians don’t suffer.”
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