Edge's Prospective: Nigeria's Vice President Prof. Osinbajo urges central bank to review FX policy...

Nigeria’s central bank needs to review its foreign exchange management strategy and ensure that the Naira’s valuation reflects market reality, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said on Monday.. 

Nigeria's Vice President Prof. Yomi Osinbajo

Edge's View: 

About time Mr. Vice President, even you have finally realise that the CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele is colossal failure just as his economy management policies have been since he took office. Please Prof. Osinbajo why not go a step further and ask him to step down, he is a failure... which has also in some way propagated the failure of your party APC as the ruling party because the economy is in shambles, nothing and I mean nothing is working, your administration wake on a daily to ban things that does not help the country and the youth grow. 

Its such an irony when you'll come out and say the youth are the future etc.. but in the same tongue you stop their growth by your administration lack of vision and foresight. The average Nigerian youth already sees the direction the future heading and they are meeting it head on with innovations, creativity, thinking outside the box, Crypto Currency...etc.. but since you are all visionless, you keep cutting them down, cutting their wings and every effort they put in to try to survive the lack of job opportunities and so many other vices. 

The government rather avoid been blamed and refer to the youths as lazy, Endsars, Yahooboys and etc... in a society whereby there is no job or means of lively hood, what the hell do you think will happen. 

A couple weeks ago an incessant fuel scarcity rare its head in UK now with the civility and decorum, violence broke out in fuelling station and unruly behaviours where witnessed.. This is just to point out that no country has the capacity stay sane in an unproductive and a non-functional government. Nigerians have endured this for years, England had it for a couple of weeks.....just take a moment to picture that.

News Continues....

Nigeria has several exchange rates operating in parallel, a system put in place during a 2016 oil price crash because the government was seeking to avoid a large official devaluation of the Naira as a matter of national pride.

Osinbajo urged the central bank to rethink its demand management policy, which it has used to restrict imports in an attempt to manage pressure on the currency.

“I think we need to move our rates to be as reflective of the market as possible. This ... is the only way to improve supply (of dollars),” the vice president said.

He was speaking at a mid-term retreat of government ministers chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Osinbajo said the Naira had since June been trading at 411 to the U.S. dollar on the official market , supported by the central bank, and at 565 Naira on the black market , where it trades more freely.

“We can’t get new dollars into the system, where the exchange rate is artificially low,” he added.

A central bank official last month said the bank was worried about boosting dollar supply on the currency market and not valuation of the Naira, adding that the level of the currency was expected to adjust based on demand. He said market failures had made the bank adopt a managed float regime.

Nigeria has been battling dollar shortages resulting from low prices for oil, its main export, and disruptions linked to COVID-19. The central bank has devalued the currency three times since March last year, but the Naira has continued to weaken.

The local currency has hit new lows on the black market since the central bank in July banned dollar sales to bureau de change operators in a string of curbs on the currency market.