Ned Nwoko, the senator from the Delta North senatorial district in the Nigerian Senate, has maintained that as long as Nigeria permits the use of several currencies, no economic program will be successful in the nation.
The politician made this statement on Wednesday’s episode of Politics Today on Channels Television, pointing out that the economy is currently in ruins.
According to the senator, Nigeria is the only nation where several currencies are utilized at the same time, rendering the local currency worthless.
“The current state of our economy is in ruins. It’s in a quagmire of sorts. Nothing will work, regardless of your perspective or the measures you try to implement here and there,” the politician stated.
“Nothing will work as long as we keep tying the exchange rate to our consumption. When we became an independent nation we had naira and our currency was quite strong.
“Then suddenly, we began to have other currencies, dollar, particularly, and pounds and now Euro. There’s no country that I know in the world that has the use of multiple currencies.
“If you go to Britain with the dollar, you must change it at the BDC. You cannot pay for anything with the dollars in the UK. Everybody is paid their salaries in pounds in the UK. The same thing when you go to America. Everybody uses dollars.
“So, for things to work, assuming that we agree to phase out the use of foreign currency in Nigeria, what it means is that if you want to buy oil, gas or gold in Nigeria, it would require you to use only the naira.
“So, if they’re coming from the UK for example, they’d look for Naira so that they can transact because they know they can’t use any other currency.
“Currently, nobody looks for Naira because we’ve made it so easy for them to transact with other currencies. They can come here with any currency and that means effectively, there is no global demand for our Naira. Our money has no value beyond Naira.
“For things to work, we must prevent the use of foreign currencies and then people will start to look for the Naira. When they begin to look for Naira, our currency will appreciate.”
The Senate is presently considering Ned Nwoko’s measure to outlaw the usage of foreign currencies in Nigeria.
