A former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to ex-President
Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe, has called on Acting President Yemi
Osinbajo to adopt a transparent crude oil swap arrangement to solve the
country’s foreign exchange problems.
The Jonathan administration had relied on crude oil swap arrangement, but
the NNPC had, in September 2015, decided to dump the programme, which it
said was corrupt, in favour of a direct-sale-direct-purchase arrangement.
In an open letter to Osinbajo on Thursday, Okupe argued that the swap deal
would help decrease the demand for dollars by up to $14m daily.
“It is obvious that if we can remove or substantially decrease this demand
of $5bn from our forex pull, the value of the Naira will significantly
appreciate further,” he wrote.
“Your excellency, I want to submit that this is achievable through a
responsibly and transparently organised crude swap scheme.”
He said although the Muhammadu Buhari administration “has undertaken a
limited crude oil swap arrangement,” it would not suffice.
“We need to carry it to the level at which we will not commit any
significant amount of forex to import of petroleum products anymore,”
Okupe said.
The former presidential aide, whose analysis in the letter put daily
dollar demand for the importation of petrol, added, “Under this (crude oil
swap) scheme, we will therefore remove a demand of $14m per day or $420m
per month from the aggregate import demand for Forex by the petroleum and
oil marketers.”
He explained although the current intervention of the Central Bank of
Nigeria was “highly successful”, it “is based on injecting hard earned
Forex (to the tune of over $1bn a month) into the forex market through the
banks”, and also “grossly reduces the amount of Forex inflow from sales of
crude oil to the federation account; for sharing by the state and federal
governments”.
“The crude oil swap is a better sustainable alternative as it does not
affect in any way our revenues from crude oil sales,” Okupe said.