Even as the Naira continues to weaken against the US dollar, the call came in the wake of the country’s faltering economy.

Recall that prices for goods and services, such as fuel, transport costs, food items, and utility bills, have been constantly increasing for Nigerians.

Tella Sheriffdeen, a professor of economics at Olabisi Onabanjo University, urged the Federal Government to focus more on bolstering the Naira to shield Nigerians from additional hardship.

He said, “We have to start thinking about how to manage the Naira from falling further which means that we should concentrate on importing essential things.

“We have to appeal to politicians to stop spending dollars but Naira instead. For example, the Governor of River State said he was going to give the footballers $20,000, are we spending dollars in Nigeria? Is it not Naira (that should be spent? Such spending also creates problems in the economy.

“I think we are creating more problems for ourselves than we should. When the country is of this nature, what the government should do is quickly assemble some economists that will proffer solutions for a better way forward, but I don’t think they are doing that. They think they can solve the problems on their own. Unfortunately, they cannot.

“They should get information on how we can get out of this mess. This has been internationalized; so, there is a need for everybody to come together to solve the problem.

“We are having this problem of employment and poverty and this has taken the center of the economy. People tend to spend all the money without production, it becomes a problem.”

In the same vein, an economic expert, Johnson Chukwu, who said the government was aware of the imminent crisis but was adamant about the warnings of stakeholders in the country, called on the Buhari-led regime to tackle the current economic crisis with the best hands.

He said, “The President needs to assemble an expert economic team to save the country from crashing. We have waited and we saw this coming. Some of us cried out in several reports on how the government is running the economy.

“We said if you keep on borrowing and your revenue is not growing, you will definitely be faced with such a situation where we are today. Nothing happens by accident. We don’t have time. This is not the time for talking but for action.

“It’s like saying a plane is about to crash and you bring together experts to talk, no, it can’t take us anywhere. The President needs to assemble sound and well-tested economic experts to save this country from the economic crisis before us.

“The President should constitute a team, empower them, and implement their recommendations. As a nation, we should be talking about a strong economy at this time and not the situation we are in now. It’s unfortunate where we found ourselves.”

Sulaiman Karwai, a professor of business administration at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, urged the federal government to reduce the cost of governance immediately.

“The economy is now biting more severely. We import almost everything; we are a foreign-dependent country. As long as we don’t bring the dollars down, nothing will work. The dollar is crazy now.

The government must also put an end to banditry because the North is the nation’s main producer of food and because of these problems, farmers are abandoning their farms. Another significant issue would arise if the harvest this year turned out to be poor. And as you are aware, food security is crucial because everyone’s first concern is what to eat.

“Salary of workers also needs to be reviewed to reduce poverty. What your salary could buy in 2016, it cannot buy even one-tenth of it now.

“The next is that the government needs to review itself and reduce the cost of governance. There is a need to reduce the salary of all members of the Senate, governors,” he added.