By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The call by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the Federal Government to float the Naira has been rubbished by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Speaking on Friday on the sidelines of the ongoing IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, USA, Acting Director of the CBN in charge of Corporate Communications, Mr Isaac Okorafor, described the call as one without “sense.”
Mr Okorafor said it would be a wrong idea to implement such policy at this moment because it would ‘kill’ Nigerians.
“Our economy has its own peculiarities, and we cannot kill our people in the name of floating the Naira,” Mr Okorafor said at the event.
He reminded the IMF that, “If we float the Naira and allow speculators and those with corruption money and all the people who create the bubbles to launch into the market, you can yourself imagine the kind of situation we will find ourselves.”
The CBN spokesman said Nigeria cannot be compared with Egypt, which carried out a similar policy, pointing out that, “Egypt has half of our population, Egypt receives about $12 billion in foreign aids and several billions in tourism.
“We are 180 million people, our infrastructure is so poor and the productive capacity cannot be fast enough to rise to benefit from massive depreciation.
“If you float the Naira today, and given the discoveries by security agencies, you’ll discover that our case will be terrible.
“If Egypt today has an inflation rate of almost 31 percent, remember Angola also has about 36 percent inflation, ours is at 17.26 percent.”
Dipo Olowookere 
Adedapo Adesanya