Former presidential aide, Reno Omokri has said that the President Bola Tinubu administration’s decision to float the naira was the right thing to do despite its difficulty.
Omokri, a critic-turned-admirer of Tinubu, said the president risked being unpopular to give Nigerians the best.
Recall that two weeks after coming to power on May 29, 2023, Tinubu’s administration decided to allow market forces to determine the naira exchange rate.
This effectively ended the era when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) arbitrarily fixed the value of the naira.
The decision led to a record fall in the value of the national currency.
In an X post on Wednesday, the socio-political commentator lauded the appreciation of the naira from ₦1590/$1 yesterday to ₦1400/$1 today, describing it as a “big deal”.
He said, “Nigerians must understand that the Naira you are seeing today is not the same Naira Tinubu met.
“Tinubu met an artificial Naira that was being subsidised at the rate of $1.5 billion every month. It was bankrupting Nigeria.
“By floating it, he made the right decision for Nigeria. He risked being unpopular to do the right thing. He knew his political opponents, who also promised to float the Naira, would use it against him. He knew that opposition-linked media, like Arise TV, would use it to turn the public against him. But he still did it. That is courage.
“Now, it is our collective consumption habits that drive the value of the Naira. Celebrate this progress. It is a gradual process.”
Omokri urged Nigerians to consume local products to further boost the value of the naira.
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