…..Vows to resist sale of refineries
From Bimbola Oyesola (Switzerland)
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has warned the Federal Government to beware of speculators who may truncate the process of unification of the naira exchange rate .
This is even as it vowed to resist plans to sell off the nation’s refineries to friends and cronies of government’s officials.
Commending President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Geneva, Switzerland yesterday, while speaking at the sideline of the ongoing 111th International Labour Conference (ILC) for taking the bold steps taken on the unification of Forex, TUC president Festus Osifo, urged Tinubu not to allow speculators to determine the exchange rate.
He noted that the steps taken by the Federal Government will in no small measure assist in fixing the nations’ battered economy.
“We have been advocating against multiple exchange rate, because it’s actually killing our economy. In the last eight years, it is a single item that has affected our monetary and fiscal policy as a country. It has affected us on all end,” he said.
Osifostated that for a unification of the multiple rates to succeed, there must be some fundamentals steps to be taken to fence off speculators from having a field day.
He averred that if by unifying on a single day the exchange rate of naira to dollar jumped to N750 in the bank, then it became necessary for government to set some machinery in motion else in few days speculators would hijack it and push it to N900.
He however said that it would not have been an issue if Nigeria is producing locally.
“No country in the world that allows its currency to be left anyhow. Government must not allow speculators to determine what the exchange rate will be. If government don’t have rein over it speculators will take advantage of it,” he said.
The TUC President lamenting that the multiple exchange rate makes millionaire overnight insisted that the new single window should be allowed to succeed through keeping the speculators at bay.
He said, “There’s no country that developed overnight because the way our currency has been managed over the years is appalling. No country