Uwaleke, who made the call at the weekend, was reacting to the planned Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) scheduled for today and Tuesday.
He predicted that the MPC would likely hold the policy rates at their current levels against the backdrop of the fact that headline inflation moderated in July and August.
Uwaleke said that the US Federal Reserve had also started cutting interest rate, with the Bank of England and European Central Bank likely to follow suit.
“My advice to the MPC is to completely pause the rate hikes in view of their adverse impact on economic growth and employment in an economy that is struggling with stagflation.
“I think it is time the MPC began to explore unorthodox measures for controlling money supply as opposed to the current approach of undue reliance on the Monetary Policy Rate,” he said.
On his part, a political economist and public affairs analyst, Professor Anthony Kila, advised the MPC to ensure that its decisions directly impact lives of citizens.
Kila, a professor of Strategy and Development at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies, said that the MPC would either increase, decrease or keep interest rate at the same level.
He added that none of the outcomes would matter to most citizens in the country.
According to him, in advanced economies, MPC meetings outcomes are usually anticipated with hope as decisions directly impacted on various sectors of the economy, because interest rates mattered and affected everyone.
“Such is not the case in the Nigerian system, where a more significant part of the economy is neither captured in, nor affected by interest rates.
