Nasarawa State governor Abdullahi Sule has decried the suffering rural dwellers are experiencing as a result of the insistence of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to phase out the old Naira notes. Sule accused CBN of confiscating people’s money rather than exchanging the old notes with the new Naira.
The governor made this known while presenting flags to candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), at the state secretariat of the party in Lafia, yesterday.
Sule restated that the only way the CBN can ameliorate the suffering of the people occasioned by its cash swap policy, is to allow the old naira to be in use alongside the new currency for a period of six months.
He appealed to the CBN to have a rethink on its determination to phase out the old Naira notes, as the action of the apex bank is only causing avoidable suffering for the people.
The governor pointed out that, for a state like Nasarawa, where there are lots of rural areas, the CBN’s insistence on phasing out the old Naira notes will only bring untold suffering to the people.
He said, “I am using the opportunity to appeal to them, because we have issues at hand. A state like us that has lots of rural areas face lots of challenges when it comes to the issue of the prevailing cash crunch.
“Yesterday, I sent the SSG to various banks and a lot of these banks have no new Naira at all to give. And in a state such as Nasarawa where a business woman has a total capital of about 3000 or 4000 or 10000 and you insist she must keep that money in the bank, you are killing that person.
“I am using this opportunity to call on the Central Bank to reconsider this cash confiscating process because this is purely cash confiscation and not exchange. Because in a situation where you are forcing somebody to put their money in the bank and they must put their money in the bank, that is a total cash confiscation. It’s not allowed anywhere in the world to have people go through this kind of suffering.
“I’m using this opportunity to call on the CBN to reconsider its position, to allow the old Naira and the new Naira to continue going for the next six months. If it will go for the next six months it will be enough to fully implement the policy.”
Commenting on insinuations that the CBN’s insistence to implement its cashless policy was meant to punish certain people, Engineer Sule further appealed to the central bank not to punish the common people needlessly.
“If indeed, there are ulterior motives as people are saying, to punish some other people, I want to appeal to the CBN that those people you are trying to punish are not punished at all because some of them own banks. Instead, it’s the commoner, the vulnerable, our rural people that are suffering,” he added.
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