By Fatima Muraina

An economic expert, Dr. Olutoki Stephen has condermned the recent devaluation of Nigeria’s currency by the Central Bank.
He said devaluing the currency of the country means taking away the purchasing power of the people.
Stephen, who is the Registrar of Institute of Economics in Nigeria, described devaluation of Nigeria’s currency as killing.
“People of the nation will now be financially weak in their purchasing power with the present situation considering the high price of commodities,” he said.
Explaining the reason for currency devaluation, he said government devalues to encourage production and to monitor the performance of the nation’s economy, but regretted that both reasons were not genuine in Nigeria.
According to him, the country does not have any production that could be encouraged neither does it have a workable instrumental policy growth to fine-tune the economy to bring about an equilibrium in the society.
“Even, the oil we are selling cannot be refined until we export and sold back to us,” he observed.
Stephen who explained the major economic instruments of physical and monetary policies, stressed that the physical policy is that which deals with price stability, income policy and taxation, while Monetary policy is the sales, purchase power and security instrument including the exchange rates in the banks.
Explaining further, he said exchange rate is the value used to determine the potency and power of any nation’s currency in the world, while he decried the inability of the country to know the amount of currency that is in circulation within the economy as a result of corruption which he said is adversely affecting the nation.
“Over 69 percentage of Nigeria population are living below poverty level, living below $1 rate per day and a dollar is about N480 which means about 159 million Nigerians are living below not earning $1 per day”
He called on the people to agitate for a new workable system where every citizens will be working within the law and constitution of the country.
“People must come with a new constitution and there must be competition among the federating units in Nigeria. It’s not restriction of governance where somebody will be above the law. Every citizens must operate under the ambit of the law,” he said.
It would be recalled that the Central bank of Nigeria has devalued the nation’s currency by 5.5% to N381 last week.