The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general election, Peter Obi, has unveiled his plan to tackle Nigeria’s rising Inflation and crashing naira.
Fielding questions on Arise TV’s Morning Show on Monday, Obi emphasised that Nigeria would need to feed herself to combat inflation and forex crises.
He stated that Nigeria is not productive, and must move to feed itself. According to him, if India could do it, so can Nigeria.
What is Peter Obi saying
The politician said: “If you deal with inflation and rising exchange rate, it will help if you deal with fiscal rascality and production. If you deal with the two issues, you start to bring down inflation. Today your food inflation is 23%; with this flood, the situation would be far worse.”
He added that one of the greatest assets Nigeria has is its large arable lands, especially in the northern part of the country.
He stated that if the Nigerian population were to feed itself, the country would need to generate about N80 trillion which would significantly impact the agricultural contribution to GDP. He further noted that “doing this would bring down food inflation and create more jobs.”
He then added that he would curb the country’s flooding issues if elected President in 2023. He said the flooding problem could be solved by predicting the calculation of rainfall and dredging major rivers to hold the water.
“There’s a combination of things that I need to do. There is the issue of the Lagdo Dam, but even the minister said the rainfall caused the flooding and not the barrier. But if you take the average rainfall in the past 20 years — since 2001 — it remains the same, which means it is predictable.
“But the issue is that we have refused to dredge some rivers. We need to dredge the River Benue and Niger from Baro, Niger State, down to the Atlantic Ocean. But there’s currently no ability to hold this drainage, and tributaries are also part of causing this problem. The rivers no longer contribute to our economic growth as they should,” Obi said.
What you should know
- Nigeria’s inflation rate surged to 20.77% in September 2022, up from 20.52% recorded in the previous month. The food inflation rate in September 2022 was 23.34% on a year-on-year basis, marking an uptick from the 23.12% recorded in the last month.
- According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the increase in the country’s inflation rate may be attributable to the disruption in the supply of food products, the rise in import cost due to depreciating currency, and the general increase in the price of production.
- The Nigerian exchange rate has crashed to N755/$1 against the US dollar on the black market, while the exchange rate between the naira and the US dollar at the importer and exporter window (I&E) official window depreciated to N441.13/$1.
