The Presidency has urged Nigerians to patronise locally made goods and service to strengthen the nation’s currency, the naira.
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, announced this while addressing reporters at the State House on Friday in Abuja.
“One, His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, wants to communicate very clearly to our people that there has never been a more important time in our history to actively agree together,” he said.
“That we will patronise and purchase made-in-Nigeria products across all value chains across all sectors.”
The presidential aide said this is one of the decisions taken by President Tinubu to ensure the continued strengthening of the naira against other global currencies.
Ngelale also highlighted government interventions, such as the presidential conditional grant scheme which was providing 1 million nano enterprises with non-repayable grants up to N50,000 and N75 billion to 75 large manufacturers employing over 1,000 Nigerians each as some of the efforts the government was making to improve the lives in Nigeria.
He said the President was doing everything he could to ease the burden on families while also ensuring that the public sector and the federal government remained accountable in their spending.
The presidential aide said the government was doing this by ensuring a drastic cut in travel expenditures so that as from April 1, all unnecessary foreign travels would stop.
According to him, this will save the nation over N5 billion per quarter.
On the proposed minimum wage, Ngelale said the President wanted to bring sustainable strength to the currency before granting a new minimum wage to the workers.
The presidential aide said the discussions for the minimum wage were ongoing, adding that the government did not want “a situation in which the minimum wage continues to be what it has always been in the history of our country, which is a moving goalpost”.
Hen said: “I’m certain that everyone seated here and indeed Nigerians at large have witnessed the seismic shifts that have taken place within the nation’s foreign exchange market over the course of the last several days and the strengthening of the Nigerian naira against the United States dollar.
“This is clearly the direction all of us have wanted to heading. And we are very sober to the fact that this is no time to rest or to clap. This is a time to deepen our efforts to dig in and to work harder, which is why His Excellency, President bola Ahmed Tinubu, has approved a series of interventions to ensure that we see a mass strengthening of the Nigerian naira against all other global currencies.”
