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The Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Ogunwusi
The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi Ojaja II, on Sunday, commended President Bola Tinubu, saying the hardship resulting from his bold economic reforms is gradually giving way and yielding fruits for Nigerians.
The monarch also said that the arbitrage between the parallel and the official markets has been closed completely for the first time in 20 years.
He stated this at the maiden edition of the Nigeria-Kazakhstan Business Council International conference held in Abuja.
“We all know the challenges of our dear country. I will give a simple example of a plane at the highest altitude dropping. Any casualty can come up in that process. But we thank God Almighty that things are normalising on a gradual basis in our country. These are all the fruits of the great things we are seeing as a nation now.
“We want to send a message on behalf of the private sector and the traditional institution of this country that we are getting there gradually as a nation. For the first time in 20 years, the arbitrage between the parallel market and the official market has been closed completely.
“It is quite evident that now our country is investor friendly. Our capital market is repositioned for a better inflow of foreign investment. Also, many Nigerian entrepreneurs that are here are looking forward to connecting with their associates from Kazakhstan as well,” he stated.
Continuing, the Ooni also noted that last year’s meeting between Tinubu and his Kazakhstan counterpart birthed the current bilateral relationship between the two countries.
On his part, the Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Abubakar Kyar, confirmed an earlier report by The PUNCH that food prices in the country have crashed 40 per cent.
He said, “I believe you are aware of what is going on in the commodity markets now. We have people out there surveying markets in the country. I have not even seen some of my staff for the past two weeks.
“They’re monitoring and giving us real-time day-to-day prices of foodstuff, and we have seen how it crashed within the last month by 40 per cent. However, we are also pleading with processors of food to pass down those benefits of the crash to the Nigerian citizens.
“That is very key because people are still using the finished products, same price, without passing it on to the Nigerian population. So we are also monitoring those and keenly watching what is happening in the retail sector.”
When asked what was responsible for the price crash, Kyari disclosed that it was a case of demand outweighing supply.
The minister, however, praised the president for his N200bn intervention in the sector, saying it helped give farmers across the country renewed hope.
“As an economist, I know market prices are determined by supply and demand. It’s simple microeconomics. What happened before was that we were challenged by high demand and low supply. But for 2024, we had a positive harvest, which means we have more supply than in previous years.
“It was a deliberate attempt by Mr President to make sure that we bring down food inflation to the bare minimum. And we are still not relenting. We are looking at price stabilisation mechanisms. Within the next two weeks, we want to roll out the stabilisation to further dampen and bring down the price without, I must say this, discouraging local production.
“Now we have seen people who were hoarding bringing the foodstuff out because they bought it at a high price, and they don’t want to make any losses. We are also discouraging hoarding at the same time. So we have gone into the second season wet. The first part of the dry season was in November. Hopefully, we are going to have a situation of an all-year-round harvesting of staple crops,” he said.
Earlier in his speech, the Deputy Minister of Kazakhstan Foreign Affairs, Alibek Kuantyrov, praised the monarch for agreeing to host his delegation at the maiden edition of their bilateral meeting.
While stating his country as an enclave of only 20 million people, Kuantyrov noted that over 90 per cent of the population doesn’t use cash in their transactions.
The envoy slap urged the Nigerian government to consider opening an embassy in Kazakhstan to facilitate the ease of doing business with the 1st African country.
“Our goal is how to promote food security for the whole region of Central Asia and other countries in our continent. It was Kazakhstan that established the Organisation of Islamic Food Security. More than 40 countries are now members of this organisation.
“Unfortunately, Kazakhstan doesn’t yet have an embassy here in Nigeria just you don’t also have one in our country. We are hoping Nigeria will open one soon. That is also why our delegation is here. So we will also be discussing how to fast-track our diplomatic arrangements and other logistics,” he said.
