Fayose to Buhari: Stop the self-deception, naira is already devalued

Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose has stated that the continued insistence by President Muhammadu Buhari that the naira would not be devalued is an act of self-deceit, as the naira is already losing value going by its free fall to the U.S dollar.
Fayose said: “With the gap between the official rate of N199 and open market rate of over N400 to one dollar, the naira has already been devalued.
“Therefore President Buhari must stop deceiving himself and shortchanging Nigerians, especially the states and local councils in the country with his forex policy.”
The governor in a statement by his media aide, Mr. Lere Olayinka, issued in Ado-Ekiti Sunday, said aside from breeding corruption through round tripping or foreign exchange arbitrage, Nigerians were also being duped, while middle class Nigerians who grow the country’s economy are being decimated.
He lamented that there was no time in the history of Nigeria that the gap between the official rate of the dollar and secondary market rate exceeded N200.
Fayose pointed out that it made no economic sense for the federal government to keep computing the country’s revenue on the basis of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) official rate of N199 to a dollar while states and local councils that share the revenue with the federal government run their businesses at the parallel market rate of over N400 to the dollar, thereby causing enormous distortions as businesses fold up by the day and the prices of goods and services skyrocket.
The governor said Buhari was applying his 1984 failed economic policy during which the prices of goods were fixed, not minding the cost of supply, such that essential commodities like milk and sugar became scarce and Nigerians were made to line up in the sun to buy rationed commodities.
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