Foreign Minister Tuggar Urges Nigerians to Stay Hopeful, Assures Economic Reforms Will Ease Hardship

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar, has urged Nigerians not to lose faith in the administration of President Bola Tinubu because of the hardship they are facing, assuring that there is going to be light at the end of the tunnel.

Tuggar made the plea over the weekend while fielding questions from journalists during an interactive session at the Tuggar Foundation office, Bauchi.

He stated that Nigeria was not the only country facing hardship currently, stressing that it is a situation that equally affects other parts of the world.

According to him, the policies of the past administration contributed greatly to the hardship in the country.

Tuggar also blamed the 2008 global financial meltdown and other unavoidable calamities that affected the world, such as the coronavirus pandemic.

He stated, “Nigerians over the years have been importing petrol. We had four refineries, two were built in the 1960s in Port Harcourt. We have the Kaduna and the Warri refineries. These were built when Nigeria’s population was much smaller than what it is today.

“Today we have a population of 220 million, which means the consumption of petrol has gone up, but we have not over the years been expanding our refining capacity, which made us to be importing more petrol as the price was going up globally.

“The other issue is, of course, the exchange rate, which was equally affected by the subsidy. If we are subsidising consumption and not subsidising production because what we ought to be doing over those years was to be subsidising production and industries so that we can prosper. But, unfortunately, a lot of money was going into subsidising the importation of petroleum product.

“When President Tinubu came into office, he made the decision to institute macro-economic reforms. Even if we decided not to make those reforms, we could no longer afford to be buying expensive petrol that we could be using on a daily basis. So, the president embarked on the reforms, which meant that we would no longer be subsidising the importation of petrol.”

Tuggar said there were different exchange rates for different purposes, which created room for arbitrary practices.

According to him, “Some people were getting allocation of foreign exchange of dollars, which they will not use to import the raw materials that industries require but, instead, will sell it in the market and just put the money in their pocket.

“So, President Tinubu closed the exchange rate so that we will have one exchange rate. While all this was going on, the activities of crypto currency traders were undermining the system. There was in particular a crypto currency exchange that was taking advantage of these reforms and was using the opportunity to launder money.

“People who had stolen money and had kept it here in Nigeria were using crypto currency to take the money out, which meant that they were undermining the reforms that the Tinubu administration was carrying out and that of course led to further hardship.

“That is why some of the individuals that were involved in these nefarious activities or representatives of the crypto currencies traders have been arrested and have been charged to court.”

The minister explained that the president had been doing a lot to reduce the current hardship in the country, with the distribution of palliatives to citizens and fertiliser, inputs, seedlings, and pesticides to farmers.

He stated that the reforms were something that the current administration had to do to safeguard the future of the country.

“We are beginning to feel the impact, though it is slow, but we have to remember that Nigeria is not in isolation. This hardship is taking place all over the world so we will continue to remain steadfast,” Tuggar stated.

Segun Awofadeji

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