Pat Utomi, professor of political economy and management expert, says Nigerians may begin queuing to buy salt if the government fails to handle the fundamentals of the economy.
Speaking on Sunrise Daily, a breakfast programme on Channels Television, on Thursday, Pat Utomi said the government needs to deal with the fundamentals of a producing economy.
He said Nigeria should “learn from history” to fix the problem facing our economy. A similar economic crisis in the early 1980s saw Nigerians queue up to buy essential commodities such as milk and rice because the foreign reserves were down and importers could no longer access forex.
“If you go back, it is good to go back, there is nothing new about what we are experiencing, it has been experienced in history. So if we can draw lesson even from our own history and what is going on elsewhere,” he said. “I came home from grad school to Nigeria in 1980 and people were pouring Champaign into bucket of water and washing their hands in it.
“I mean that kind of madness needed ultimately to be reined in and when supply crashed and reality was beginning to settle, we said we don’t devalue, that time our currency was a block currency was just determined from the Central Bank, it was a block currency.
“So central bank will say this is our currency and we continue to say this is our exchange rate we will not devalue, we were not changing the fundamentals of our economy, we were still mono-product, we were still dependent, were not selling.
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