The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele yesterday said the country’s foreign reserve had risen to $35.2 billion from$23 billion in October last year.
Emefiele spoke at the 47th Convocation of the University of Nigeria Nsukka, UNN, in Enugu State. The theme of his lecture was “A mind set for succeeding in today’s Nigeria.”
“Foreign Reserve has recovered significantly from a low of just over$23 billion in October 2016, to about $35.2 billion by November 27, 2017,” he said.
This was even as the Vice Chancellor of UNN, Prof Benjamin Chukwuma Ozumba, said that medical students of the institution would now spent two of their last years in Israel to enable them practice medicine in any part of the globe after graduation.
Ozumba further said that the university had started to produce laptop computers locally, even as he presented Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, Emefiele and chairman of the occasion and former CBN governor, Prof Chukwuma Soldotna with the “Lion Laptop computers.
Apart from the computers, Ozumba said that the university had put in place a science park, consisting three components including technology transfer, business incubation and innovation to make students of the UNN employers of labour on graduation.
However, Mr. Emefiele attributed the rise in reserve and domestic production to what he described as “our development finance effort and the dogged implementation of our FX policies. ”Continuing, he said that decision to deny importers of a list of 14 items access to foreign exchange from the CBN made great impacts on the nation’s economic, which recently exited recession.
Emefiele acknowledged the rising population of the country which he estimated would reach 450 million by 2050, hence the need to provide for the needs of the large population.
The CBN boss urged the graduates to seek opportunities in the challenges that currently confront the nation by being innovative and adopt entrepreneurial spirit. “I believe that young Nigerians can begin today to see these trends as opportunities and think of what they can do to take advantage of the situation,” he added, pointing out that CBN, had been providing funds for start-up businesses. He therefore urged young Nigerians to use the current harsh economic realities in the country Udedi rather said it was unfortunate that CBN failed to make adequate research before exposing it’s ignorance about Enugu state empowerment programes.
He also went further to accuse the CBN of abandoning it’s own programme on agriculture which he said was aimed at empowering youths on agriculture.Udedi however said: “Enugu state has several youths empowerment programmes; there is one youth, one skill program which is about training each youth in the state to have one skill.
Every graduate is being trained inone skill or the other.“We also have a program on new t echnics on crop yielding farms like in cucumber, palm plantation. We just finished a program today (yesterday) where 300 youths attended a workshop conducted by the Raw material research council.
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