OCTOBER 31ST, 2017
Nigeria has been urged not to adopt same currency with other West African countries under the guise of ECOWAS currency for any reason, saying economies of West African countries have not matured enough to the stage of having common currency.
Gbenga Adeola, the Executive Secretary of Kogi and Kwara States branch of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), stated this while fielding questions from journalists on the suggested merger of currency for West African countries by 2020.
Currency, according to him plays a central role in the development of any country, adding: “There are activities that need to be carried out to ensure a smooth acceptance and other issues involved in currency application and I don’t think we have done enough to analyse the issues involved for the adoption they are proposing.
“I think there is a need for better understanding and
clearer presentation of the issue before the adoption. But in principle, it is a fantastic idea. What do you think will happen to the funds spent to print our own currency? It will also have an exponential effect on the Nigerian economy.”
Speaking further, Adeola said: ”I would agree with the President that there is a need for caution. There was a time Nigeria and Ghana wanted to adopt Eco hoping that other countries would join , but the lack of understanding of what needed to be done and basic issues that needed to be cleared stopped its adoption some ten years ago. A lot of progress was made along that line at that time. So, they should continue from where they stopped.
“They need to consummate the idea and do the needful. When the transition to euro was made, a lot of things were done to ensure that the benefits of a single currency were achieved by all the countries involved,” he noted.
Adeola, who observed that there are problems that could be encountered in currency integration, pointed out that the French- speaking countries in West Africa already have CFA and they don ‘t have a problem with it.
“It is other countries that are not in that arrangement that need to reach some agreements and in the process of doing that, they have to merge with the CFAs to form one currency.
Within the region, Nigeria is the strongest economy and on that basis, the country will be expected to underwrite some of the things that will be happening with respect to other countries,” he explained.
Adeola added that, “There are criteria and benchmarks have been laid out and some of these countries are not meeting them. I don’t think we’re meeting them ourselves. So, that particular aspect needs to be dealt with.
“The Eurozone crisis is hard to forget. Greece, for example, became a problematic case. It had entered the Eurozone under false pretences and all kinds of steps were taken. They even got an American firm to testify that their figures were okay, whereas they were not. And so, they surreptitiously entered the Eurozone only to become a burden for the rest of the zone.”
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari had during the meeting of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at Niamey, Niger recently suggested that the issue of merging one currency for countries in the region by 2020 should be treated with caution.
SIKIRAT SHEHU, BusinessDay