One of the richest men in Nigeria, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has commended the Central Bank of Nigeria’s decision to ban 41 items from the Forex market; Dangote described the decision as an “excellent and one of the best decisions taken so far by the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele.”
Dangote who is also the President of Dangote Group said “We cannot be importing poverty and exporting jobs.”
He added that the measure would encourage his firm “to look inward and massively produce locally to create jobs for our growing young population.”
Meanwhile the CBN in a statement also explained its decision, the apex bank said “Take rice imports, for example: why should we keep allocating scarce forex to rice importers when vast amounts of paddy rice of comparable quality produced by poor hardworking local farmers across the rice belts of Nigeria are wasted, and farmers are falling deeper into poverty while we export their jobs and income to rice producing countries?
“Few decades ago, Nigeria was one of the world’s largest producers of palm oil but today we import nearly 600,000 metric tonnes while Indonesia and Malaysia combine to export over 90 per cent of global demand. Under these circumstances, the CBN will do the little it can to protect the jobs and incomes of local farmers, using some of the same principles Western Economies use to justify the protection of their farmers through huge subsidies.”
Leave a Reply