Sen. Ali Ndume, a senator from Borno South, has claimed that the nation still sells its main export, crude oil, in dollars even after the naira was devalued to N1700 against the dollar.
He said that any money obtained would likewise be worth 1.8 or a comparable amount. He clarified that because the nation’s present budget is dollarized with respect to income, there may be a potential surplus in budgetary finances, suggesting that there may be more money available to fund the budget.
He said in an interview with Channels TV, ”This budget is a dollarized budget so to say especially in terms of the income. And when it comes to in terms of expenditure, is in naira. So if we are getting our money in dollars and the value of dollar is up, that means that we will have more naira in terms of what we spend.
So we are not spending dollars, we are spending naira. The value of naira to dollar has fallen to N1700 but we are selling our major product in dollars.
And that means any dollar we get now will also be valued at 1.8 or whereabouts. So in fact, if you do the analysis critically, that means if you balance it up, we may have more money to fund our budget.”
