President Bola Tinubu has pleaded with Nigerians to deliberately patronise home-made goods and services with a view to sustaining the current positive showing of the Naira at the foreign exchange market.
He said while the fair development around Naira’s exchange value did not yet call for celebration, more work and efforts were required sustain the gains.
He also appealed to the generality of Nigerians to blow the whistle on those undermining the national currency.
Tinubu, who spoke through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, during a briefing of State House correspondents, said government was working hard at strengthening the naira to make life easier for Nigerians when the new minimum wage comes into effect.
The Naira has appreciated at the foreign exchange market over the last few days, gaining N18 to close at 1,382/$ at the official market on Thursday.
“This is clearly the direction all of us have wanted to head and we are very sober to the fact that this is no time to rest or to clap.
“This is a time to deepen our efforts to dig in and to work harder, which is why His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has approved a series of interventions to ensure that we see a mass strengthening of the Nigerian Naira against all other global currencies,” Ngelale said.
According to him, Tinubu wants Nigerians to understand that “there has never been a more important time in our history to actively agree together that we will patronise and purchase made in Nigeria products across all value chains, across all sectors.”
Continuing, he said: “There is an intentionality that we must have on this issue that we want a strong currency. We want the spending power of our people to go up. We want every Naira and kobo we earn to be more valuable, not just here, but when we travel abroad. The way to achieve that is by doing just this.
“In addition to that, His Excellency Mr. President, beyond the appeal to Nigerians to actively and intentionally make that decision every day to patronise made-in-Nigeria products and services across the board, he is also wanting to ensure that Nigerians fully understand that the momentum that we are now seeing, with respect to the strengthening of our currency, is not going to slow down.”
