Kano state governor and Abdullahi Ganduje has alleged that Central Bank governor Godwin Emefiele introduced the chaotic change of Naira notes because of the spectacular failure of his presidential bid.
Emefiele did what many considered unthinkable when he enrolled last year to join the presidential race after he had secretly registered as a member of the ruling All Peoples Congress, APC and then went on to file a suit in court to compel the electoral commission to accept his presidential bid.
Shortly after he pulled out after it was rumoured that an amorphous group had purchased the N100 million presidential form for him.
Ganduje who was speaking after a meeting on Friday betweenPresident Muhammadu Buhari and the governors of the ruling party, claimed that the CBN governor did not want the elections to take place.
Ganduje’s comment on an Hausa BBC service interview comes follows claims earlier in the week by Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State who alleged that some individuals in Aso Rock were attempting to sabotage Bola Tinubu, the APC’s presidential candidate from winning the February 25 presidential election.
According to Ganduje, the progressive governors had warned Buhari at their meeting that chaos of the Naira replacement will result in untold difficulties for Nigerians.
According to him, “this is not the agenda of the APC, it is the agenda of those who surrounded the president and the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. You know he (Emefiele) wanted to be the president but he failed. That is why they don’t want the election to hold or prefer another party to win it.”
Also on Friday, Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo described as “disturbing” the inability of Nigerians to have access to the new naira notes and the ongoing naira scarcity which has caused protest nationwide.
Osinbajo urged the Central Bank to engage financial technology companies (fintechs) as well as mobile money agents to address the issue of getting new naira notes across the country.
Osibanjo, in a meeting with some fintech stakeholders, expressed worries over the difficulty in getting new naira notes and advised the CBN and commercial banks to address the situation immediately.
“You need cash to pay for transport. For instance, in Abuja, how do you take ‘drop or along’ or use a Keke NAPEP without cash, or buy foodstuff on the road or in canteens, or even buy recharge cards?” Osinbajo said, according to a release by Laolu Akande, his spokesperson. Parents with kids in public schools give money daily to their children for lunch, most commerce is informal, so you need cash for most things.
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Speaking further on the redesign of the naira notes, Osinbajo lamented the scarcity of the new notes. “More disturbing is the fact that after depositing your old notes, there are no new notes, so people everywhere in the urban areas and rural areas simply have no money,” he said.
“There are logistical challenges that have to be addressed by the CBN and the banks, especially from the point of view of the average Nigerian and those in the hinterland who hardly use any electronic platforms.”
Osinbajo also said while there has always been a certain failure rate in online banking and money transactions, they have become even more difficult now with the increase in the number of transactions congesting the system.
“So where in the past you used POS or any of the electronic platforms, you had maybe 20 percent to 30 percent failure rate, now because everyone is trying to get on those platforms, obviously, the failure rate is much more and the problems are much more pronounced,” the Vice President noted.
“We really need to make progress even as we make efforts to deal with some of these issues confronting us today,” he said.
