‘June 12 elements regrouping’, Ganduje faults court judgment on the naira

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State, on Tuesday, raised the alarm that the persons behind the annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election “are regrouping and dangerously masquerading” in the prevailing crisis generated by the naira policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria to scuttle the nation’s hard-earned democracy.

According to him, the latest attempt at that was camouflaging in unknown political parties through the use of legal instruments to further impose an unfeasible cash policy taking its toll on the Nigerian masses.

Ganduje was reacting to an interim injunction issued by Justice Eleojo Enenche of a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja, stopping the Central Bank of Nigeria from extending the ten-day deadline set for the currency swap.

He alleged that political parties were also colluding with the Peoples Democratic Party to execute the evil scheme.

The Kano State Commissioner for Information, Malam Muhammad Garba, in a statement quoted the governor as saying that the open support for the policy by the PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, also laid bare the grand complicity between the opposition and the CBN “to deliberately thwart the nation’s hard-earned democracy by imposing harsh policies calculated to weaken the masses.”

He said it was “unfortunate that the CBN and its collaborators are insisting unnecessarily on the imposition of an unreasonable time frame for the old Naira notes to cease to be legal tender, in total refutation of the obvious national dearth in the necessary technological infrastructure for the process.”

He added, “The rigid insistence on the implementation of these harsh, inhuman and insensitive cash policies to a point of neglecting their widespread rejection by the vast majority of Nigerians including the National Assembly and all state governors, is an ominous agenda for the undermining of the nation and consequent scurrying of a smooth transition to a freely and fairly elected successive administration.”

The Judge had restrained the Federal Government and 27 listed commercial banks from suspending, stopping, extending or interfering with the currency redesign terminal date of February 10 or issue any directive contrary to the date.

Also restrained were the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), Central Bank of Nigeria and the Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele.

In a motion ex parte filed by five of the 18 political parties, Justice Enenche also granted an order directing the CEO’s of the banks and their alter egos to show cause why they should not be arrested and prosecuted for the economic and financial sabotage of the country by their hoarding, withholding, not paying or disbursing the new N200 N500 and N1000 bank notes despite supply of such notes by the CBN.

(TNT)