Ambassador Tuggar Speaks On Current Economic Hardship In Nigeria

From Paul Orude Bauchi

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar has attributed the current economic hardship in Nigeria to past policies.

Tuggar, who made this known on Saturday during an interactive session with journalists in Bauchi, added that the hardship was also as a result of factors beyond the control of the current administration.

He said the problem can be traced to the 2008 global financial meltdown that was followed by other unavoidable calamities that befallen the world as a whole.

“We had the corona virus pandemic, where borders were closed, movement of goods and services and people came to a halt and so many people lost their lives and that effected general the cost of living all over the world, and Nigeria is not an exception,” he recalled.

“Because as the global economy has been developing, there had been a lot of leakages, trade between countries, and movement of people across country, all of that were affected so the price went up.

“Nigeria over the years had been importing petrol that we have been using here.

“We had four refineries – one that was built in the 1960s in Port Harcourt, the second refinery in Port Harcourt, which is larger and as we all know, the Kaduna refinery and then of course we have the Warri refinery.

“These refineries were built when Nigeria’s population was much smaller than it is today.

“Today we have a population of 220 million, which means the consumption of petrol has gone up but we have not over the years been investing in expanding our refineries capacity”

The minister explained that the current hardships was compounded when Nigeria started importing more petrol and the price of petrol globally was going up.

“The other issue is of course the exchange rate, which is equally affected by the subsidy,” he observed.

“If we are subsidising consumption and not subsidising production, what we were doing over all these years only subsidised consumption industries so that our industries will prosper but unfortunately a lot of money was going in to subsiding only importation of petroleum.

“Which meant that we were using hard currency to import.

“When president Bola came into office he made a decision to institute macro-economic reforms because even if we decided not to make those reforms, we cannot afford to be buying these expensive petroleum that we will be using on a daily basis and it just disappear.

“So President Tinubu embarked on reform which meant that we will no longer be subsidsing the importation of this petrol at the same time instituted reforms to exchange rate operations”

Tuggar said there were different exchange rates for different purposes which created room for arbitrary practices.

“Some people were getting allocation of foreign exchange of dollars which they will not use to import the raw materials that industries require but instead will sell it in the market and just put the money in their pocket,” he disclosed.

“So he (President Tinubu) closed the exchange rate so that we will have one exchange rate.

“While all this was going on, the activities of crypto currency traders were undermining the system.

“There was in particular a crypto currency exchange that was taking advantage of these reforms and was using the opportunity to launder money.

“People who had stolen money and had kept it here in Nigeria were using crypto currency to take the money out, which meant that they were undermining the reforms that the Tinubu administration was carrying out and that of course led to further hardship.

“That is why some of the individuals that were involved in these nefarious activities or representatives of the crypto currencies traders have been arrested and have been charged to court”

The minister explained that the President has been doing a lot to reduce the current hardships in the country with distribution of palliatives to citizens and fertilizer, inputs, seedlings, pesticides and so forth to farmers.

Tuggar urged citizens to bear with the administration of President Bola Tinubu, assuring that although the reforms was the hard part, “There is light in the horizon, there is a bright future”

He stated that the reforms was something that the current administration had to do to safeguard the future of the country.

“We are beginning to feel the impact, though it is slow, but we have to remember that Nigeria is not in isolation,” he said.

“This hardship is taking place all over the world so we will continue to remain steadfast”