President Mohammadu Buhari may have indirectly banned Nigerians from pursuing their educational career abroad.
The decision followed a discovery of the high demand for US dollar by parents of the students studying abroad who buy it to foot the tuition fees of their wards always puts unnecessary pressures on the Niara, the local Nigerian currency which in turn affects the economy of the country.
This is arguably one of the reasons why the Niara is consistently on the downwards.
Convinced that the practice is responsible for the current free fall of the currency, president Buhari said that Nigeria can no longer continue selling dollars to parents to sponsor their wards in schools abroad.
He however said that any parent who could afford it could go ahead.
The decision was part of the interview president Buhari granted to Aljazeera television during his trip to Qatar last weekend.
He said: “Those who can afford foreign education for their children can go ahead but Nigeria cannot afford to allocate foreign exchange for those who decided to train their children outside the country. We can’t just afford it. That is just the true situation.”
The president also frowned at those who received foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN to buy pharmaceutical products abroad but divert the money to make more profits.
He said that the culprits would be hunted down, arrested and prosecuted.
“Anybody who is given dollars by the CBN to import pharmaceuticals and decided to go and sell at parallel market in order to make maybe additional N100, we will pursue them and punish them”, the president vowed.
