Nigerian students responsible for persistent Naira crash – CBN Governor

The Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele has attributed the persistent fall of the naira to Nigerian students seeking foreign education.

The CBN Governor made the disclosure during the 57th Annual Bankers Dinner, organized by the Chartered Institute of Bankers Nigeria(CIBN), in Lagos.

The dinner’s theme, “Radical Responses to Abnormal Episodes: Time for Innovative decision-making” was appropriate and well-timed.

According to Emefiele, there was a tremendous increase in visa issuances to Nigerians by the United Kingdom in 2022 alone.

The apex bank governor noted that the number of student visas given to Nigerians by the United Kingdom spiked from a yearly average of about 8,000 visas in 2020 to almost 66,000 in 2022, implying an eight-fold increase amounting to $2.5 billion yearly in study-related forex outflow to the UK alone.

He stated that the move had immensely pressured Nigeria’s foreign reserves and the Naira.

According to him, due to this and the need to increase forex earnings, the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee started the RT200 scheme in February 2022.

He added that the steady increase in headline inflation from 15.60 percent in January to 20.77 percent in September was consistent with global trends.

“Food remains the major component of domestic consumer price basket. The annualized uptick in headline inflation mirrors the 6.21 percentage points upsurge in food inflation to 23.34 percent in September.

“During this period, core inflation also resumed an upward movement from 13.87 percent in January to 17.60 percent.

“In addition to harsh global spillovers, exchange rate adjustments, and imported inflation; inflation was also driven by local factors such as farmer-herder clashes in parts of the food belt region,” he said.