Following crises resulting from Naira scarcity across the states of the federation, Ondo State Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari, to play the role of a statesman at this crucial moment.
Akeredolu said, “It is apparent that the crises, which the current policy on currency swap has created, continue to spiral menacingly.”
The governor disclosed that the crises engendered by the policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria to redesign some currency notes, threaten to disrupt, not only the forthcoming general elections.
In a statement personally issued in Akure, the Ondo State capital on Saturday, Governor Akeredolu noted that the events of the past days, culminating in the intervention of the apex court in the land, and the increasing gale of violence sweeping through the country, portend danger to the current democratic governance.
He pointedly said, “This period invites all patriots to speak out to proffer practicable solutions and not project cheap partisan interests.
“There is incontrovertible evidence bordering on miscalculation, error of judgment and/or disinformation on the part of the policymakers, especially the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, on the failed implementation of the policy, the effect of which compels the whole country to groan, immeasurably, at present.”
According to him, “There is hardly anyone who contends with either the statutory functions of the Central Bank of Nigeria or the occupier of the office of its Governor, one of which is the monetary policy.’’
While saying that it is also not debatable that the President and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria are empowered, under the law, to exercise certain executive power, Akeredolu said,” It can, however, not be the original intendment of the drafters of the relevant statutes that the implementation of any policy should occasion widespread hardship and pervasive agony in the land.”
His words:” The safety of the people is the supreme law. Any measure, purportedly designed to ameliorate their conditions, must not reduce the entire populace to a beggarly existence.
“There is pervasive discontent in the land. A policy, presented as a currency swap, must not be construed by both the reasonable members and people of average intelligence in the society to convey the deplorable impression of contrived subterfuge manifest in the official confiscation of legitimate deposits of the people in banks, as a countermeasure against electoral malfeasance, terrorism, and banditry.’’
“The implementation of this policy has been woeful despite claims to the contrary. The suffering of the masses, occasioned by the non-availability of new notes to replace the old ones, equally decreed out of existence by presidential fiat in contravention of the CBN Act, 2007, could have been averted if the strategy of a gradual and systematic withdrawal of the old currency notes had been adopted.
