Saving the naira against foreign currencies

NO matter the financial policies the Federal Government takes towards stabilising the naira against other world currencies, the local currency will continue to fall if we don’t take the necessary steps as Nigerians to help our economy.

What is happening today should not have happened if our past leaders had done the needful by diversifying our economy. We left a lot unattended to, while favouring importation. We could have developed as a manufacturing country just like Germany, and one good thing about this is that we have the population to consume whatever we manufacture in the country.

In order to make excess wealth, some people of influence destroyed the electricity sector, thereby making Nigerians rely on imported generators. With a population of 180million people, do we know how much generator importers will earn if about 100million people buy generators?

It is also the lack of uninterrupted power supply that has killed our industries; the textile sector in the North, which used to employ hundreds of thousands of people have been totally ruined. Consequently, we are now an import-dependent economy, importing ridiculous items like toothpicks, water, wines, fruit juices, among others.

We may say that we are not in government, and, therefore, we have not contributed to the state the economy is in today, but for every imported item that we buy, we are also contributing to the collapse of the economy.

The mess we have found ourselves will take a while to be sorted out, but first, citizens must first play their part by buying only locally-made products.

After that, the government should ensure that everything must be done so that we can generate more electricity. Generating 5,000MW of electricity for 180million people is just so ridiculous, but when we achieve better electricity generation, more industries will be established, and more jobs created. It will, therefore, go a long way in diversifying our economy from being an oil-depend one to a manufacturing one.

As things are now, we don’t really know when the local currency will stop its free fall against other currencies, but we can only help the country by reducing our need for foreign currencies. We must stop importing those items we can produce in the country, and with that, we can reduce the pressure on the naira.

• Fidelis Agbor,

Benin,

Edo State.