Utomi Calls Economic Managers To Fix Crisis 

A political economist Pat Utomi has called on the economic managers of the nation to tinker on how to resolve the economic crisis facing Nigeria.

He stated this in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday.

He added that the ‘missteps’ of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) contributed to the incessant fall of the naira. 

Naira has been declining against the major foreign currencies over the past few months, trading at roughly N1,400 to the dollar on the black market at the moment.

The currency was floated when President Bola Tinubu’s administration took office.

However, Utomi claimed that despite the incorrect actions of Nigeria’s top bank, not much has changed.

He said, “For many years, Nigeria has depended on foreign exchange sent home by the diaspora. Diaspora has been a significant part of the economy.

“They are supporting their people from there because things are not going well for most of their people. But you know what, that leads to an inflow of foreign exchange into the country, and that helped us keep things going.

“Today, entrepreneurship and technology have made it such that the dollar is not coming to Nigeria. They simply use one app and the Nigerian in London or Chicago who wants to solve a problem for their person here, gives dollars to somebody who is there and the naira goes to the persons here. 

“Yes, it solves the problem but the Nigerian economy has not received the input of the dollar. And Central Bank helped contribute to that by some missteps they made in the last few years. So, this is a major reason why the exchange rate is tumbling.”

He did, however, suggest that Nigeria’s economic administrators make some adjustments to their approach to resolving the country’s current economic crisis.

“Can we fix that? It is possible. But it takes people sitting down and people trusting the character of those making decisions,” Utomi said.