"It's been killing us," Africa needs to stop its reliability on the US dollar as it has not added value or advantage to the continent's economy, chairman of the Nigerian defense equipment company, Iris Group, Jeremiah Oluwaseun, told Sputnik Africa.
"One of the reasons why Africa has been underdeveloped till now is because we have allowed the West to maneuver us," Oluwaseun said on the sidelines of the SPIEF 2024.
Commenting on the fact that Russia, as chair of BRICS this year, has reaffirmed the goal of de-dollarization, Oluwaseun said that "this is the right time for [the African leaders] to grab this opportunity and stop being a slave under the dollar regime."
"We are tired of dollar. It is killing our economy. [...] The world needs to be free from being tied to just one source of trading. It is wisdom," he added.
The head of the company also called on the Nigerian government to increase its efforts in this direction and to make sure that the country become a member of BRICS.
Speaking about the blocking of Sputnik and other Russian media in the European Union after Moscow launched a special military operation in Ukraine, Oluwaseun noted that the EU is going "against what they preach."
"The world's eyes are getting open each day and the reality is becoming so obvious on the world's eyes that the world is at war. So it's a very wrong step and I hope that they will find a way to retract their step, just do the needful and stop this act of sanctioning. […] If they preach about freedom of speech, they should also follow what they preach", he stressed
In early May, Dr. Is'haq Modibbo Kawu, a renowned Nigerian broadcaster, political scientist, and former Director General of Nigeria's National Broadcasting Commission noted that this move by the EU "narrows the space of objectivity in terms of media."