The Presidency has warned that speculators who are in the business of hoarding dollars will soon have a rude shock of their lives with new policies to be rolled out by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Vice President Kashim Shettima, who was represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr Tope Fasua, gave the hint on Tuesday in Abuja.
The event was lecture and launch of a book titled, “Cowries to Cashless”, authored by Princess Iphie, the Executive Director of Asher Global Treasures Limited & Talia Hills Limited. The unveiling of the book coincided with the 65th anniversary of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Speaking at the event, the CBN Governor, Dr. Yemi Cardoso, also assured Nigerians that his leadership is currently working assiduously towards achieving 95 percent inclusive access to formal financial services by Nigerians in the country.
Shettima noted that President Tinubu is man of great ideas and would soon come out with policies that would help stabilise naira and economy of the country.
According to him, the President is thinking far ahead of those hoarding dollars and speculators.
He told the gathering of economic experts, scholars, businessmen and women, captains of industries and policymakers that no country would brag about a weak currency and that something is being done to address the situation, adding that naysayers should be afraid now.
He, however, said has been so much emersed in the study of currencies and that every country starts out by having a strong currency “because according to Joseph Stalin which was reechoed by Margaret Thatcher in 1980 when she was speaking with a group of British businessmen in Singapore, that if you want to destroy a country, you start by destroying their currency”.
He added that devaluation is an instrument of conquest and that when currency is devalued people could only buy fewer things while a lot of people would drop below poverty line.
“So, for those who have been praying and wishing that our currency would be nonsense, I believe that the policies that would be rolled out by the Central Bank and the Government that I serve led by President Tinubu will shock some of them,” he said.
When asked to explain what he meant further, the Economic Adviser to the President said: “You need to listen to the agenda, the man himself. And you see that the level at which are thinking is far ahead of most of us.
“You know, he has some very great ideas coming up. Some of them are what you’ve seen reverse in the fall in the value of the naira, but he has also challenged us to review forward many of the targets, for example, the idea that Nigeria’s economy will get to a trillion dollars. He wants to achieve it by 2026.
“People thought Naira would continue to lose value and that was what I was mentioning.
“So when someone is a visionary, and that’s what leadership is about. Leadership is about vision, and the man has the right vision for this country, and to back it up the passion, the passion for the country, the belief in the country. For anyone that has that you have to be fearful betting against his policies.
“Like I said, you know, a weak currency is not something to brag about. And you have to be strategic. If you want to position your exports properly. You have to be strategic, even in terms of the value of your currency.
“So, you have to see all of these, including efforts from the fiscal side, the Minister of Finance, coordinating Minister of the Economy. We have patriots running the economy right now. And naysayers have to be very, very afraid.”
In his keynote address at the lecture and launch, the CBN Governor, who was represented by the Director of Banking Supervision, Mr. Mustapha Haruna, said the country was going through economic challenges occasioned by a number of macroeconomic issues, saying these could be linked to some of the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
He said he believed that the book (Cowries to Cashless) would eloquently capture the evolutionary journey in the history of the CBN, adding that he expected a number of landmark developments, especially from the use of cowries to manillas and to the more contemporary and modern era of cashless options.
The CBN Governor spoke on the journey of the apex bank 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.
“One of our strategic priorities in this effort is to foster financial inclusion and I’m very sure you will also relate to the progress we have made based on the current numbers.
“We have financial inclusion in the neighborhood of about 64 percent. Over 64 percent of Nigerians have access to formal financial services. Our vision is to push the boundaries to over 95 percent and we are well on course, in achieving that objective.”
Cardoso assured Nigerians 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 that we currently face.
Speaking on the essence of the book, the author and the Executive Director of Asher Global Treasures, Princess Iphie, emphasised the need to preserve the evolution of money and its history in Nigeria.
Princess Iphie said: “If you don’t know what yesterday was and you don’t know what is today, definitely you will not know what tomorrow will be. So we started from Cowries to Manillas and then other ones before we started with exchange of goods and then this is where we are right now — the technological age and loads of innovation.”
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