Sell dollar @ N197 to Pilgrims?

I thought President Buhari said that pilgrimage is a personal business?

I am also of the view that the Central Bank has floated the naira to the vagaries of market forces with the caveat that they will intervene when deemed necessary.

Is this circular mandating banks to sell dollar to intending pilgrims at N197 to $1 to sort of intervention they had in mind?

If so, then we are into a very long stuff.....

By creating a different forex window for pilgrims when every serious nation treat pilgrimage as religious tourism, the CBN is undermining its own policies. Little wonder naira is exchanging at a historic high of N400 to a dollar.

Let us look at the figures......

The Pilgrims are expected to purchase a minimum of $750 and a maximum of $1000 per pilgrim and there are 65,197 Pilgrims, thus the CBN will sell as much as $65,197,000 assuming every Pilgrim buys as much as $1000 each.

$65million just to go and pray....

Nigeria’s official exchange rate closed at about N315 which suggest that this sale could cost Nigerian tax payers about N7, 693, 246,000 in exchange rate loss (based on 315 -197=118).

N7 billion to be incurred just for people who want to travel to pray to their God......not for roads rehabilitation, education or healthcare for a country with very embarrassing Under-5 Incidence and high maternal death rate.

A country with N18.000 as Minimum wage and a bag of Rice also sells for N18.000?

And you are wasting this amount just for private spiritual business?

It is unfortunate that this government has become so proficient at double speak stupidly incurring this sort of expense at a time when the economy is in a recession and millions are finding it hard to feed themselves.

Is this not also a pointer that the CBN and by extension the government might be operating a secret dual exchange rate regime which officials access at the detriment of the very policy it has been mouthing to project?

It is interesting to note that since floating the naira, the exchange rate has depreciated by as much 60% at the interbank and over 100% at the parallel market. (The dollar closed at about N400 at the parallel market yesterday).

Yet instead of working out solutions this government is pandering the the most mundane of human needs; subsidizing religion.

Little wonder they plan to produce Pencil by 2050....

#independencefortheCBN

Not only that,


A couple of fake pilgrims will be added to the list of people buying dollars at that exchange rate,
And someone is going to divert that money and sell it in the black market, making millions of it.

If this is true then I'm beginning to lose faith in Buhari Government. What then is the difference? Tufiakwa!

eziokwubundunuwa:
If this is true then I'm beginning to lose faith in Buhari Government. What then is the difference? Tufiakwa!

Abagworo welcome to reality..