Tinubu Addressing Foreign Exchange Challenges ‘Holistically’ – Gbajabiamila

To stem the tide of free fall of the Naira, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, has said the president is working to address it ‘holistically’.

Gbajabiamila spoke on Saturday in Lagos State while addressing journalists after casting his vote at his polling unit 014, located at Elizabeth Fowler Memorial School, in the ongoing Surulere 1 Federal Constituency by-election.

On Monday, Naira exchanged for N1506/1$ from the N1,410 it sold the previous day at the parallel market, while it traded for N1,349 at the official market from the N891.90/$ it was the previous day. This is despite the release of $500 million by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

“This government and this president came in and they knew there were going to be a lot of difficulties, (and) they put in the fundamentals that were not there,” Gbajabiamila said.

Part of the economic fundamentals, he noted, are subsidy removal and Naira unification policy of the government.

“Once those things are in place, then you begin to reap the benefits of those fundamentals. (But) as long as you don’t have those fundamentals, you’re just going to be running around the circle and it’s going to be getting worse and worse. Of course, the foreign exchange issue is central to all of these. And I believe Mr. President is taking the bill by the horn and the issue of foreign exchange is something he’s addressing and addressing holistically. You can see all the policies that have been rolled out by the central bank. These are all geared towards making sure we stem the decline of Naira,” he said.

He noted that Tinubu has no other thing in his mind, but how to address the issue of insecurity and economic hardship facing the country.

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives, however, pointed out it is not going to be easy, and urged Nigerians to support the government in its quest to address these issues.

According to Gbajabiamila, with the economic fundamentals put in place by the Federal Government as well as the ongoing reforms in CBN and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, the country will soon begin to reap the benefits.