Atiku’s ideas will take Nigeria back to Emefiele era – Presidency

The Presidency has argued that a controlled floatation of the naira, would only return the country to the economic era of the embattled Ex-Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele.

The Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, made this assertion in a statement on Sunday.

Onanuga was responding to the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party at the 2023 polls, Atiku Abubakar, who argued that Tinubu’s economic policies, especially the unification of the exchange rate, were implemented hastily without adequate planning and proper consultations with stakeholders.

President Tinubu’s economic reforms of the past nine months have sparked collateral instability in the value of the naira, heaping hardship on Nigerians as food prices continue to soar.

Atiku criticised the government, saying, “The wrong policies of the Tinubu administration continue to cause untold pain and distress on the economy and the rest of us cannot keep quiet when the government has demonstrated sufficient poverty of ideas to redeem the situation.”

He argued that “Given Nigeria’s underlying economic conditions, adopting a floating exchange rate system would be an overkill. We would have encouraged the Central Bank of Nigeria to adopt a gradualist approach to FX management. A managed-floating system would have been a preferred option.”