Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai has claimed that the currency swap introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was meant to incite voters against the All Progressives Congress (APC).
CBN had in October 2022 announced the new naira notes policy and initially directed that all old notes be swapped on or before the 31st of January, 2023.
After much outcry by Nigerians, the deadline was on Sunday shifted to the 10th of February, 2023.
He stated that the APC was not against the cashless policy, but argued for extension of time to enable the citizens to deposit the old notes in the bank.
During an interview on Thursday, El-Rufai said, “We are not against the policy, cashless is the way to go, but you can’t do it in a few weeks. Allow time for every farmer, trader, student, and market woman in the village and to the city to be able to take their money in the banks and get new currencies or take the bullion van to them with the security and change their money.
“It is not everywhere that POS work, and it’s not everywhere you have bank branches. Let’s look for reasonable times according to the CBN Act before the legal tender ceases to exist.”
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“I have a map of Nigeria with blind spots where there is no network; PoS won’t work there. It is not everywhere that you have bank branches. It is not everywhere you have PoS working. So, let’s sit and look at this thing and find out the reasonable time it takes to do this.
“Even the Central Bank Act that gives the President the power to issue to the Central Bank directives with regard to currency redesign says that reasonable time must be given before the currency ceases to be legal tender.
“The question is: Is a few weeks a reasonable time in a country of one million square kilometres and over 200m people? How many bank branches are in Nigeria? How many ATMs?
“In Borno State, there are only two local governments out of 27 with a bank branch. In Yobe, only two local governments out of 17 have a bank branch.
“Even a cosmopolitan state relatively in the north like Kaduna has two local governments that have no bank branch.
“So, everyone in that local government must come to that one bank branch? And this PoS that you are seeing in every street of Lagos; do you think you have PoS in every street of Kubau, Ikara and Makarfi which are local government headquarters in my state?”
