President Muhammadu Buhari, on Friday, April 22, 2016, said that his insistence on non-devaluation of the naira was for the benefit of the average Nigerian, stressing that the ordinary Nigerian will not benefit from the devaluation of the national currency.
President Buhari spoke at the Aso Rock when members of the Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries paid him a visit on Abuja on Friday, according to a press statement from the State House published on Facebook.
Although pressure is being mounted from the international community calling for the devaluation of the naira, he said he still holds to his age long conviction that the naira cannot be devalued.
He told the retired permanent secretaries that while he was military head of state, he was persuaded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to devalue the naira but he stood his ground.
Buhari said he was also asked to remove petroleum subsidy then but he resisted the move saying “the naira remained strong against the dollar and other foreign currencies until I was removed from office in August, 1985 and it was devalued”.
According to Buhari, after devaluing the naira, there was no job created for the teeming youths neither were factories built to accommodate young school leavers who crave for better life after graduation.
He told the committee of the retired Permanent Secretaries led by Otunba Christopher Tugbobo that the country needed a dynamic bureaucracy which will not mislead the people into taking wrong decisions.
The Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries was established in 2004 to serve as a platform for retired permanent secretaries to offer constructive advice to government on key policy issues.
Chief Philip Asiodu, the pioneer chairman of the council, said that its members want the present Administration to succeed because Nigeria has already lost many opportunities for progress.
“We are non-partisan. The interest of Nigeria is paramount to us and we are anxious that you should succeed,” Chief Asiodu told the President.
