The public’s usual refrain to rising prices is that “manufacturers/suppliers/farmers have increased prices of their respective goods and services; the supplier is evidently the villain in public consciousness; it would indeed require the patience of Job to convince most Nigerians that such condemnation was misplaced and it may even be more difficult to put the blame for high cost of funds at the doorstep of Central Bank. Consequently, it would be unbelievable to even suggest that CBN is infact the ‘devil in our economic workshop’.

There has been a palpable feeling of economic uncertainty in the land, since the Central Bank officially devalued the Naira exchange rate from N155 to N168 last week; the public’s anxiety is probably, the recognition of the pervasive impact of the Naira/Dollar exchange rate on the general cost of goods and motor-spirits (aka petrol) in a heavily import dependent economy such as ours.

In the wake of public concerns on the impact of tumbling oil price on government revenue and expenditure in the 2015 budget, the Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Okonjo Iweala, recently assured a joint Legislative Committee on Finance and National Planning that “we have calculated that in order to help us regain stability, we need a minimum of about $5bn.”

The CBN recently restricted direct sales of the federation’s official dollar reserves to some sectors of the economy; consequently, the importation of electronics, information technology, generators, and telecom equipment, finished products and invisible transactions will henceforth be funded with more costly dollars from the Interbank foreign Exchange market.

There are genuine public concerns that with the receding sales price of crude oil in the international market, in recent months, our heavy dependence on oil revenue may diminish any promising prospect for inclusive economic growth in Nigeria.