Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo State, has said the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) plan to redesign and issue higher-value naira notes from December 15 is a political move.
“This is purely political; when you decide to change your currency in such a ruptured manner, 30 days before an election, all you can deduce is that this is purely political,” Obaseki said during an interview on AIT monitored by BusinessDay.
“I am an economist and can tell you categorically that this policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria has no basis in economics.”
Speaking further, he urged the CBN governor to be focused on solving dollar scarcity and curbing inflation that placed the cost of food items beyond the reach of Nigerians.
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“There’s nothing urgent about changing our currency today; the urgency for us is how to get food for our citizens so that we can remove the starvation in our land. The urgency is how to maintain discipline in our monetary policy so that we can manage our foreign exchange rate because we are so import-dependent,” Obaseki added.
In light of this, the governor called on Nigerians to be deliberate with their votes come 2023.
He said: “They are trying to use the tools in their office to manage the currency so that they can sway money to the people they want too before the elections.
“I am repeating it; if we allow the APC government to continue, this country will fail. All of us must come out and make sure we do whatever it will take not to allow the APC government to continue in this country, the responsibility lies in all of us Nigerians.”
Already, the badly thought-through policy has sparked a massive rush to the dollar, leading to the virtual collapse of the local currency which traded for N838/$ yesterday, down from N785 last week.
Ijaw leader Edwin Clark has also lampooned the manner in which the currency rebranding was being pursued saying it was reckless, insisting that the central bank should be concerned with better managing the foreign exchange market.
