.Energy expert offers strategic solutions to boost naira, ease pressure on forex

Lagos State House of Assembly has decried the continued downward slide in the value of the naira against the dollar.

The Assembly at its plenary, therefore, advised the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on some bold steps to take to shore up the value of the naira.

Part of the resolutions of the House was that the Federal Government should come up with a mechanism to reduce foreign trips for seminars and conferences by ministries and agencies, adding that this should apply to states.

The House, while stressing the need to strengthen security across the nation, also called on the CBN “to embark on sensitisation of Nigerians on the steps being taken by the apex bank to reduce the pressure on naira and the expected roles of Nigerians at this time.”

The Assembly urged that depositors of dollars in banks should be engaged for an acceptable arrangement where such funds could be utilised by the government to help reduce pressure on the naira.

Speaker of the Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, who presided over the sitting, lamented the disparity between the dollar and naira, while commending the CBN for taking some measures with the hope that such actions would yield positive results.

Obasa, who further commended the National Assembly for inviting the CBN governor for discussion recently, urged the government to regulate religious pilgrimages as they attract undue interest in dollars and put pressure on the naira.

According to him, this action could be sustained until the naira stabilises.

Meanwhile, an energy expert in the oil industry, Dr Edafe Asedegbega, has chided the Federal Government for its short-sightedness in seeking solutions to the free fall of the naira against major world currencies, particularly the dollar, saying that solutions to the problem require strategic thinking.

He pointed at the consumption of locally-made products and services, as one effective way of solving the naira’s free fall.

Asedegbega said that kneejerk measures would not have far-reaching effects in the country’s woeful economic situation. Rather, he canvassed practical productive measures and deliberate Nigerianisation of consumption should be the government’s priority measures.

Asedegbega offered these suggestions in response to the continuing free fall of the naira against the dollar.

What would save the naira, according to Asedegbega, is curbing Nigeria’s excessive taste for foreign goods, which he said the government currently actively promotes with its preference for foreign goods and services.

He wondered how anyone would expect the naira to appreciate against other currencies, “when you don’t grow anything or manufacture things that you consume?”

The energy expert also said that loans taken for consumption or the extra money saved from subsidy removal should be used to set up (enable) mega farms for rice, beans, maize, and cassava production with processing hubs in the entire North and South where there are vast and arable land.