IF I were president, Naira would depreciate to N600 – Peter Obi

During his appearance on Arise TV, Peter Obi, the presidential candidate for the Labour Party, stated that if he were to become president of Nigeria, he would have devalued the nation’s currency to N600.

Obi expressed his dissatisfaction with the prevalent use of the US dollar as an unofficial medium of exchange and vowed to impose substantial penalties on those who frequently transact in dollars instead of using the national currency, the naira.

“Nobody floats what you don’t have supply of,” he criticised the Tinubu administration’s purported floating of the naira.

He said floating of the naira “is not something you do haphazardly.

He said rather than haphazardly floating the naira, “we should have worked on criminals and excesses in our foreign exchange regime.”

He highlighted the importance of carefully considering policies such as the exchange rate and inflation, as well as addressing the undersupply and dollarisation of the country’s economy, in order to effectively manage the nation’s currency.

“We should have devalued to about N600 while managing to deal with supplies and deal with the issues that control the exchange rate.”

According to him, “what controls the exchange rate is your reserve and what controls your reserve is your export.”