New Naira Policy'll Deepen Poverty, Says UAD

from All Africa

This Day (Lagos)
NEWS

By Ndubuisi Ugah
Lagos

Leadership of the United Action for Democracy (UAD), yesterday faulted the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Naira redomination policy, recently unfolded by its Governor, Professor Charles Soludo, saying the policy will further deepen the nation's poverty index.

Speaking at a press briefing in Lagos, UAD's Convener, Comrade Abiodun Aremu, said redomination of the naira was not intended to alleviate the sufferings and poverty status of Nigerians, but will further impoverish them.

Soludo recently unfolded a new Naira regime, which when fully in force, will stabilise the exchange rate, reduce inflation, reform micro-finance, restructure lower denominations of the currency, re-introduce coins, and promote efficiency of the payment system.

But dismissing the policy, Aremu said instead, "the Soludo's fallacy is another phase of the IMF-SAP NEEDS that will continue to deepen poverty and sufferings.

"The agenda can never work on the basis of the neo-liberal economic paradigm. For example, the greatest enemy is to insecurity of lives and properties is NEEDS fallacious policy that encourages retrenchment and unemployment in the guise of right-sizing, down-sizing, etc. Thus, the goal of protecting lives and properties cannot be achieved in the face of millions of unemployed."

Aremu, who spoke alongside Comrade Taiwo Otitolaye, UAD's general secretary, said "Nigerians have a choice now to reject the neo-liberal economic paradigm. The Soludo's fallacy came in the wake of emergency declarations on the energy sector and on the Niger Delta, a divisive ploy to give the unsuspected public the impression of a break by Yar'Adua from the Obasanjo's wasted years.

"Why were other stakeholders (labour, manufacturers association, chamber of commerce, bankers' association, etc) in currency financing excluded in the decision on the policy shift? Even the IMF issue in the 80s up to the Babangida dictatorship's adoption of SAP in 1986 was subjected to a country wide debate," he said.