The President of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN), Mr Taiwo Owokalade, has said that the present economic situation in the country cannot support the Naira.
Speaking at the Institute’s first presidential press meeting held in Lagos, Owokalade said: “Few days ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor cried out loud saying that the government needed to do something serious to protect the oil industry seeing that the quantum of theft going on there is huge and they are losing lots of foreign exchange.
“So they cannot even fund. So saying that they don’t want to fund is not because they don’t have the capacity there is little or nothing to use in sustaining the naira against the dollar.
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“The reality is that the economy cannot support the naira as we speak. As we move on, that plane will keep on dragging, keep on pushing itself. I pray that in my generation it should not get to N1000 per dollar.”
Owokalade mentioned that although people were expecting that for an oil producing nation like Nigeria, the rise in oil prices was supposed to be an oil boom for the country but the reverse is the case.
He highlighted factors causing low revenue generation from the oil sector saying: “There are two major factors that are affecting us.
One is the issue of theft. Two, even when we produce, we don’t refine it.”
He emphasized the need for a strong willed government to get Nigeria to its feet.
“We need strong willed government that is willing to address these issues and some of the people that will put Nigeria back into sanity,” he stated.
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