How to bail Nigeria out of recession, by don

Ex-DVC wants security vote scrapped

The quest for favourable exchange rate will remain elusive in the absence of fiscal and policy discipline, a Professor of Finance, Ade T. Ojo, has said.

Speaking at the yearly Mountain Top University public lecture in Maboro, Ogun State at the weekend, the don canvassed “devaluation accompanied with structural economic reforms, leading to the widening of export base and bridging of infrastructural gaps.”

Ojo, who is the Dean, College of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences, maintained that embracing either of the two options without practising both would worsen the economic situation of the citizenry.

Delivering his paper titled, “A Realistic Naira Exchange Rate- An Elusive Search,” the university teacher, whose audience included players in the organised private sector and the academia, faulted the selling of a dollar at the official rate of N197, describing the move as a non-productive cause, contending that such an initiative was inimical to containment of the spiralling inflation.

“We are suggesting that the attention to be put on agriculture and manufacturing should be vigorously pursued, not only to reduce drastically the huge importation of food goods and services that gulps large foreign exchange spending, but to increase non-oil export to earn foreign exchange to make up the low earnings from oil

“To facilitate such diversification, there would be need for the Nigerian financial system to be better adapted to providing the required finance, particularly long- term finance than short-term inadequate funding now existing in the country,” Ojo added.

He decried what he described as “indulging the elite” by allocating foreign exchange to them at the official rate while leaving the masses to source same from the parallel market at exorbitant prices.

Also, former Deputy Vice Chancellor, Delta State University, Abraka, Prof. Peter Egbon, has called on the Federal Government to scrap security vote from the constitution, saying it was another form of embezzlement of public funds that had led the nation to its present economic crunch.

Egbon, a Professor of Economics, in an interview with The Guardian yesterday in Asaba, identified the country’s failure to save for the rainy day when there was oil boom as another reason why the people are in this avoidable mess.