The Special Adviser to the President Bola Tinubu on Economic Matters, Tope Fasua, has said a weaker currency for the country was one of the best policies of the government.
Tope Fasua said the country’s currency’s low performance in comparison to other currencies has focused the attention of businesses on sourcing local raw materials.
In an interview with Arise TV on Monday night, Fasua noted that the current exchange rate has also stopped Nigerians from leaving the country for other countries.
Fasua argued that Nigeria has more students in the United States and the United Kingdom than most developed countries, not because the country’s education was totally bad but because of wrong choices. He said the weak Naira was also addressing it.
“I’m giving the advantage of making that currency weaker. Because now we’re focusing more on Naira and what Naira can do. We’re focusing more on what we can do ourselves. We’re focusing more on Nigerian raw materials. Many manufacturing companies have now started sourcing local raw materials rather than importing them.
“A lot of people aren’t traveling as many times as they would before. That’s one of the things, especially the middle class. And our middle class were special people. I mean, we assumed that we could travel five, six times on business class every year.
“How come Nigeria is the third or fourth country with the highest number of university students in the U.K. and the U.S. of all the countries in the world, we are rubbing shoulders with China with 1.4 or 1.5 billion people, we’re only 200 million people. That means that we’re putting so much money. It is not necessarily a failure of our education. It’s just aspiration. It’s aspiration,” he said.
The President’s Economic Adviser stressed that it was wrong for critics to assume the country would grow to be like Western nations that have been developing for years.
He emphasized that many Nigerians complaining of no work have decided not to work. According to him, the country has work for the citizens.
“The fact that we are rubbing shoulders and expecting that our economy and society will be at par with even the people that gave us colonization, who have had maybe 2,000 years of documented history. That means we have been preposterous. We’ve been preposterous, you know, because we can’t, your child cannot try and be you today. He has to learn and grow. And it’s also a matter of time.
“It’s good that the Naira has become weaker, but it has made us focus more. However, what we’re saying is that for those who are enterprising, for people who have work, who want to work, indeed, there’s work in this country. For those who want to work,” Fasua added.