The governor of Kano state, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has stated that President Muhammadu Buhari’s currency reform scheme is intended to undermine Nigeria’s democracy.
According to the Daily Trust, Governor Ganduje announced this in Kano after meeting with the Forum of Former Parliamentarians, North-West Zone late Wednesday, February 15.
Kano State is one of the states contesting the policy’s legality before the Supreme Court. Ganduje made the assertion in reaction to the problems Nigerians are having in obtaining the new N200, N500, and N1,000 notes.
President Buhari noted in his address to Nigerians on Thursday, February 16, that the naira exchange was aimed to battle inflation and other offenses. Before, the Kano governor was not known for publicly opposing President Buhari since he was a key figure in selling the administration to the voters.
Despite the APC’s determined efforts to assure Buhari’s election victories in 2015 and 2019, Ganduje was cited as stating that it was regrettable that the president chose to repay the party and those who backed him by “destroying the party that brought him to power.”
“Imagine someone has been contesting without winning elections until after a merger was formed. He won the election and spent four years and re-contested again and he won, now that he is about to go, he is doing nothing but to destroy the party that elected him,” Ganduje said.
Ganduje allegedly questioned why the updated Naira policy had not been conceived of seven years earlier by the president and governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, and why it had to be enacted right before an election.
“What is wrong with doing it after elections” Why hasn’t he done this in the past seven years? What is the meaning of all these” This CBN governor is not a politician; he doesn’t know anything about politics. How can a politician enjoy this policy” Imagine how as a leader you watch banks engulfed by fire, if not that the democracy has decayed, will that be possible”.
“How is it possible when the World Bank said the policy is wrong, the IMF said it is wrong, other leaders said it is wrong, but you said you need seven days to think over it”.
“The poor man selling vegetables will have his goods rotten (before the end of the thinking period), that is why I close down one supermarket for rejecting the old notes.
“The Supreme Court has said the old notes are still a legal tender, that is why any bank that refuses to collect, I will revoke their certificate and if they do that, they cannot work”, he said.
The Governor said that if his party’s presidential candidate wins in 2023, the policy will be repealed.
