Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule has execrated the suffering rural residents are going through as a result of the declaration of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to phase out the old Naira notes.
Governor Sule indicted CBN of sequestering people’s money rather than exchanging the old notes with the new Naira.
The Governor made this known while presenting flags to aspirants of the All Progressives Congress (APC), at the state secretariat of the party in Lafia, yesterday. Governor Sule restated that the only way the CBN can better the suffering of the people occasioned by its cash exchange policy, is to allow the old naira to be in use alongside the new currency for a period of six months.
He appealed to the CBN to have a rethink on its determination to phase out the old Naira notes, as the action of the apex bank is only causing avoidable suffering for the people.
The Governor pointed out that, for a state like Nasarawa, where there are lots of rural areas, the CBN’s declaration on phasing out the old Naira notes will only bring untold suffering to the people.
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He said, I’m using the occasion to appeal to them, because we’ve issues at hand. A state like us that has lots of rural areas face lots of challenges when it comes to the issue of the prevailing cash insufficiency.
Yesterday, I sent the SSG to various banks and a lot of these banks have no new Naira at all to give. And in a state like as Nasarawa where a business woman has a total capital of about 3000, 4000 or 10,000 and you declare she must keep that money in the bank, you’re killing that person.
I’m using this occasion to call on the Central Bank to review this cash sequestering process because this is purely cash confiscation and not exchange.
Because in a situation where you’re forcing somebody to put their money in the bank and they must put their money in the bank, that’s a total cash confiscation. It’s not allowed anywhere in the world to have people go through this kind of suffering.
I’m using this occasion to call on the CBN to review its position, to allow the old Naira and the new Naira to continue going for the coming six months. If it’ll go for the coming six months it’ll be enough to thoroughly implement the policy.
Reflecting on imputations that the CBN’s insistence to implement its cashless policy was meant to discipline certain people, Governor Sule further appealed to the central bank not to discipline the common people needlessly.
Nevertheless, there are ulterior motives as people are saying, to discipline some other people, I want to appeal to the CBN that those people you are trying to discipline are not discipline at all, because they some them own the bank. it’s the commoner, the vulnerable, our rural people that are suffering, ”he added.
