The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has criticized the naira redesign policy initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari, saying it was ill-timed and has brought hardship to Nigerians.
NEF spokesman, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed stated this on Wednesday on Channels Television special election programme, noting that the resultant cash crunch has distorted the informal sector in the country.
He wondered why the naira redesign policy was initiated close to the general election, noting that it has demarketed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“This money thing is a major demarketing thing for the APC,” he said.
“If the worst enemy of APC had designed a strategy for them to lose this election, he couldn’t have chosen a better fiasco around the reprinting of the naira.”
The NEF spokesman stated further that there is a lot of anger and to see a situation where the President rather appears unwilling or incapable of reining in Emefiele and say, ‘Listen, perhaps we can allow the old naira and the new naira co-exist for the next six months’.
“President Buhari apparently doesn’t listen to anybody. Emefiele says I will do what I should do because the President has got my back. And Nigerians are saying we know the governor of the CBN is not who is doing all these; it is the President,” Baba-Ahmed said.
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“If the President doesn’t want all this suffering and considers the other options, the governor of the CBN won’t get away with these things he is getting away with.”
Due to the widespread public outrage, the CBN extended the deadline for exchanging old N200, N500, and N1,000 notes from January 31 to February 10, but the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government the CBN, and commercial banks could not continue with the deadline until the issue was resolved on February 15.
At least seven APC states have already sued the Nigerian government.
However, the governor of the central bank insisted on Tuesday that the February 10 deadline for the validity of old notes remains in effect.
In the last few days there have been protests by Nigeria across several states in Southern Nigeria over the policy and scarcity of cash.
On Wednesday about three people where killed in Edo State during protests in several part of the state. About two commercial banks were also burned, while security agencies stopped attempts to invaded the CBN office in the state.
On Thursday, in a national broadcast, the president extended the deadline by 60 days for the old ₦200 notes only.
