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Naira redesign policy ‘ll destroy APC — Baba-Ahmed

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3 years ago

February 15, 2023

Spokesperson of the Northern elders Forum (NEF), Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, says the Naira redesign policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will destroy the ruling All Progressives Congress.

Speaking on Tuesday in an interview on Channels Television, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, said the naira scarcity is a “major demarketing thing” for the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the February and March polls.

“We got here because President Buhari has messed up right to the point he is going to go,” he said.

“To have allowed this kind of fiasco to exist on the eve of an election when you are actually campaigning to have your own party voted for.

“If the worst enemy of APC had designed a strategy for them to lose this election, he couldn’t have chosen a better strategy than this fiasco around the reprinting of the naira.

“People are starving, that is the honest truth. Literally, in three to four weeks, you have destroyed the informal sector of the economy. Because there is no cash. There is a lot of anger.

“You see a situation where the President appears unwilling or incapable of reigning in Emefiele and say, ‘Listen, perhaps we can allow the old naira and the new naira to co-exist for the next six months’.

“President Buhari apparently doesn’t listen to anybody. Emefiele said I will do what I should do because the president got my back.

“And Nigerians are saying we know the governor of the CBN is not the guy who is doing all these difficult things for us, it is the president. 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 from.”

Nigerians have been battling with the scarcity of new naira notes— a development that has led to queues at banking halls, and automated teller machine (ATM) points.

There have been protests in some parts of the country due to the scarcity of new naira notes.