Buhari: Nigeria Can’t Afford Forex Demand for Students Studying Abroad – President Muhammadu Buhari has said that Nigeria cannot afford to sell forex to parents seeking to fund their children education abroad. This president’s position on forex allocation for school fees of Nigerian students studying abroad was part of the interview Buhari granted to Aljazeera television during his trip to Qatar last weekend, which was posted on the TV’s website sunday.
Buhari said his position on the forex allocation issue followed a discovery that the high demand for forex by parents of the students studying abroad to pay their wards’ tuition fees had been putting unnecessary pressure on the Naira, which in turn affects Nigerian economy.
Convinced that the practice is responsible for the current free fall of the currency, Buhari said the country could no longer continue to sell dollars to parents to sponsor their wards in schools abroad. He, however, said any parent who could afford forex outside of the official window could go ahead.
According to him, “those who can afford foreign education for their children can go ahead but Nigeria cannot afford to allocate foreign exchange for those who decide to train their children outside the country. We can’t just afford it. That is the true situation we are in.”
The president also frowned on those who received foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) to buy pharmaceutical products abroad but divert same to make more profits He said the culprits would be pursued, arrested and prosecuted.
“Anybody who is given dollars by the CBN to import pharmaceuticals and decides to go and sell at parallel market in order to make, maybe additional N100, we will pursue them and punish them”, the president vowed.
Speaking on the state of economy and the pressure to devalue the Naira , president Buhari stated that Nigeria was prepared to go against the advice of the International Monetary Fund( IMF) in that regard. Read more (Credit: This Day Newspaper)
