THE Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki has given his reservations on the plans of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to redesign the Nigerian currency, Naira, saying that the plans have no economic basis and the intention hidden in politics.
The Edo State governor made this claims during the inauguration of the Edo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Women Campaign Council at the Presidential Campaign Secretariat on Wednesday in Benin City, the state capital.
In his words: “They say we should all bring our naira and give it to them because they want to change it for us. Is that our priority now? How does changing of currency reduce the price of food in the market? They say they want to change our currency and dollars are going higher every day. We can’t even see dollars again,” the governor added.
“I am an economist and I can tell you categorically that this policy by the CBN and Federal Government has no basis in economics. There is no reason to do this; this is purely political.”
He also stressed that there are other basic and important things which can be done in the country, other than redesigning the which is not an issue of urgency.
“The urgency for us is how to get food for our citizens to remove starvation and hunger from the land. The urgency is on how to maintain discipline in our monetary policy so that we can manage our foreign exchange rate because we are import-dependent,” Governor Obaseki said.
