The Senate on Wednesday summoned the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele to brief the senators on the current state of the economy.
This is coming less than 24 hours after the bank’s monetary policy committee, MPC, meeting which made some far-reaching decisions about the naira.
The upper legislative chamber on Wednesday debated the current status of the Nigerian economy after the Chairman, Senate Committee on Gas, Bassey Akpan, yesterday raised a point of order under order 42 of the senate rules- which has to do with matters of urgent national importance.
The Senator representing Akwa Ibom north-east, had while making his submission, stated that the economy had slipped into a full-blown recession, stressing that there was the need for an urgent remedy.
“I wish to draw the attention of this chamber to the statistics of Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the state of Nigerian economy. Statistics have shown that our economy has gone into a full-blown recession,” he had said.
After listening to him, the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki stood down the matter to Wednesday – when the motion on the economy was debated.
According to the NBS, 1.5 million Nigerians became unemployed in 2016.This is besides 13.7 percent inflation rate, and the depreciating value of the naira.
The CBN had yesterday held an urgent monetary policy committee meeting to look into the current fiscal challenges, resolving to adopt a flexible foreign exchange policy just as it said that a recession was imminent.
