Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, expressed concern about the rapid decline of the naira, attributing it to the excessive printing of money by the Federal Government.
He made these remarks in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday.
“I believe that the major problem we have is financial discipline. We are dealing with an economy where we printed so much money, at the last count, we will be nearing N30 trillion,” he said.
“So what happens with ways and means is that the quantum of goods that you have available in an economy does not increase with the quantity of money that you print.”
While being interviewed, the governor, a member of the Labour Party (LP), emphasized the need for the nation to shift from consumption to production in order to revive the economy.
He criticized the current scenario where Africa’s largest economy relies heavily on imports for almost every product, stating that this puts excessive strain on the foreign market.
“The issue of production versus consumption, if the economy must recover, we must move to production.
“That does not necessarily mean we will reduce consumption; what it means is that we will be consuming what we produce, to the extent that we are importing virtually everything. You keep piling pressure on the foreign exchange market,” he said.
