Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State, has alleged that the naira redesign policy of President Muhammadu Buhari is aimed at truncating the efforts of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that brought him into power.
Ganduje revealed this in Kano when he met with the Forum of Former Parliamentarians, North-West zone, that visited to intimate him of their resolve to support the presidential ambition of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling APC.
Recall that Kano is one of the States before the Supreme Court challenging the monetary policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Federal Government, owing to the hardship Nigerians are passing through in accessing the new N200, N500 and N1,000 notes.
Also, Buhari had in a broadcast to Nigerians on Thursday said the naira swap was meant to tame inflation and other infractions.
However, Ganduje said it was unfortunate that despite the collective efforts made by the APC to ensure Buhari’s election victories in 2015 and 2019 after several losses, the President had resolved to pay the Party and those that supported him back 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.
The Kano governor asked why the President and CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele did not think of the policy seven years ago and why it had to be on the eve of 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?
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“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.
Ganduje furthered that Tinubu would revoke the policy after the election because the said policy was not of the ruling party but a plot to ensure elections do not hold.
“It was like this at the time of SDP with the Association of Better Nigeria (ABN); the CBN governor is the ABN of this dispensation.
“Therefore, this is even beyond not wanting someone to win the election; it is democracy itself they don’t want. They want to set up an interim government committee like that of (Ernest) Shonekan.
“Which credible politician do you think they can put to head such a committee? Except you just bring people that do not represent the masses but their families, those are the ones you can bring to form interim government,” he said, adding that these people will be puppeteer to ensure only the candidate of their choice emerges victorious.
Convener of the former parliamentarian forum, Adamu Panda, on his part, said the forum agreed that the next president should be someone who believes in the philosophy of building the people in building the nation.
He said they believed that the unwritten agreement between the North and the South must be respected and keeping the country stable and united must therefore be of importance to all.
“Support for power-shift is therefore necessary for us,” he said.
The forum also said the North backing any other presidential candidate aside from Tinubu could jeopardise the budding relationship between the North and the South, which could cause the South West seek alliances elsewhere.
