Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, yesterday restated the Federal Government commitment to turn the lessons of CoVID-19 into strong learning points that would help the country grow its economy.

Speaking on the topic Turning COVID-19 Tragedy into an opportunity for a new Nigeria in Abuja Emefiele said there was no need for Nigerians to despair but to rather use it as a spring board to move the country forward.

“For a country of over 200 million people, and projected to be about 450 million in a few decades, we can no longer ignore repeated warnings about the dangers that lie ahead if we do not begin to depend largely on what we produce locally, because the security and well-being of our nation is contingent on building a well-diversified and inclusive productive economy.”

He noted that as at June 2014, Nigeria was spending  about N1.3 trillion importing  rice, fish, wheat and sugar raising questions as to why the country  cannot grow these products locally despite its abundant natural resources. He recalled that only a few decades ago, Nigeria was one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of palm oil, cocoa and groundnuts.

the cessation of movement policy two weeks ago, we did make an exemption for banks to be allowed to engage in skeletal services and following that, the financial authorities released additional guidelines to the banks. “We are appealing to the banks to please continue to provide financial services, especially the availability of cash at the ATM and skeletal services within the banking halls.continuum.