The Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai
Mohammed has said that he never said that Nigeria’s economy was beyond the
control of the president.
Lai in a statement by Segun Adeyemi his Speacial
Assistant said he views while speaking on a radio show on Saturday was
misrepresented and twisted and that he never said that the Nigerian economy had
gone out of the control of the current administration led by President
Muhammadu Buhari.
The Minister further enjoined Nigerians to disregard such
distortion and continue to support President Buhari as his administration is on
the move to take Nigeria out of the woods. The statement read thus On Saturday
morning, I appeared on a Radio show here in Abuja at which I spoke extensively
on the issues affecting our country, especially the economy To my surprise, my
views were twisted and I was reported to have said that the economy of our
country is beyond the control of the President.
This is a gross
misrepresentation of what I said. I could not have said our economy is out of
the control of our President or the administration he heads. As a matter of
fact, this Administration has decided to turn the economic disaster that we
inherited to a blessing by diversifying our economy.
I don’t know the reason
behind the gross distortion of my comments on the radio today, but whatever the
motive is, Nigerians should disregard such distortion and continue to support
our President and his Administration to take our country out of the woods.
“Honourable Minister’s comments on the economy during the programme goes thus:
”Again, we have not been very fortunate with our economy in the sense that we
came in at a time when there is global collapse in the prices of commodities
ranging from oil.
”Unfortunately for us, we have inherited an economy where the
mainstay of the economy, crude oil, crashed from an all high of $100 to about
$30 and that of course means that automatically the source of our foreign
exchange was affected. 80 percent of our foreign exchange used to come from
crude.
Today we have lost 70 percent of that amount so that is the major
reason.” “While indeed this Administration inherited a disastrous economy, it
has decided to turn the disaster into blessing by diversifying the economy away
from oil, thus widening its base and weaning the country of its addiction to
oil. Below is the excerpt of the interviewer. Q: The free fall of the Naira in
the last three weeks has been very discomforting and a lot of people are asking
a lot of questions and some people even say wow, it has never been so bad.
Has
government been able to discover (the source of) this untoward development? Lai
Mohammed: I think it is clear why the naira is today in a free fall. You see,
what are the factors that determines the exchange of the naira? It is your
export and import; your trade balance and the general economy. Unfortunately we
have not been fortunate in any of these, which is about 70 percent of all our
total earnings.
Before now, oil was selling for about N100 per barrel; today it
is about N30 per barrel. And if you look at the cost of production, it has
remained about the same. We have lost about 70 percent of all our income and
not only was oil responsible for all our income, it was also responsible for
about 90 percent of all our foreign exchange, which makes between 90 -80
percent of our source of foreign exchange.
And naturally there will be more
pressure on the Naira and less dollars and more naira chasing the dollars and
now look at the balance of trade – it is negative. What do we do with trading
and how much did we buy from Britain, for instance, and how they buy from us,.
Unfortunately, it is negative.
We take more from them than they take from us.
If a country suddenly loses about 80 percent for its source of forex, clearly
that currency will be in trouble. The only way out is what the government is
doing, which is strengthening the economy, diversifying it, plugging all the
loopholes and making sure that only the essential things are imported. It will
be extremely difficult, no doubt, but we are also in a state of emergency
economically.
You see, take for instance, your earnings reduced from N100 to
N30 per month, something will have to give way…like relocating to a smaller
house and I mean this is a reality. The fact that the government is even still
managing this situation, I give credit to the government, because the situation
is completely beyond their control, and this is where people have been
mischievous…
Today we live in a global community, Nigeria cannot determine the
price of oil or gas. And that is why the presiident has gone spending countless
nights lobbying, rallying other oil-exporting countries on how do we stabilize
the oil price…. The programme was aired on FRCN’s Radio Link. – Thisday.
Vanguard
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