ONDO State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has said the Naira and fuel scarcity hitting Nigeria were part of a plot to make the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, fail to achieve his ambition.
In a state-wide broadcast on Thursday, February 23, the governor decried the Naira redesign policy, which he described as ill-timed and orchestrated by officials of the Federal Government to make Nigerians hate the ruling party and consequently make its presidential candidate lose his popularity.
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“He (Tinubu) is at the centre of all the darts arrows of the current misnomer in Nigeria because he represents the new Nigeria we all envisage. The central purpose is to frustrate his popularity and renowned acceptability across all tribes and religions in the country.
“The goal is to truncate the election and deny the country the service of a true patriot and endowed visionary with a proven record of character, knowledge, leadership and performance. It is also an attempt to abuse the principle of the constitutional presidency by denying a section of the country its legitimate right, thereby fueling ethnic disaffection and creating a great constitutional crisis in the country,” the governor said.
The ICIR reported how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) redesigned the old N200, N500 and N1000 notes and made the old notes cease to be legal tender.
Since the apex bank’s directive that the old notes cease to be legal tender on February 10, Nigerians have faced unprecedented crises in getting cash.
Akeredolu had earlier said the Naira swap had reduced the APC’s popularity.
The ICIR reported President Muhammadu Buhari as ordering the CBN to redesign the Naira.
But Akeredolu, like other APC governors who have condemned the policy, failed to direct his attack at the President.
The ICIR reported how some APC governors dragged the Federal Government to court over the policy.
In his Thursday address, Akeredolu noted that the policy was designed to truncate the nation’s democracy by disrupting the election process.
“It is disheartening and worrisome that the exercise is faced with unnecessary, unfortunate and undesirable man-made obstacles deliberately set to incapacitate and truncate the entire election process and confuse our people,” he said.
While empathizing with his state’s people over the challenges they face in getting cash, he said he was convinced that both the “ill-timed cash swap policy and the ‘artificial scarcity of fuel were both literal injections deliberately administered to demarket government, create an uncontrollable crisis in the nation, brew disaffection between the people and government and finally frustrate the 2023 general election.
“To say the least, it is a dagger drawn at the heart of the ruling party All Progressives Congress on the eve of the election in order to destroy it and the government it controls at the federal and state levels.”
He noted that despite the “desperate effort of selfish and subversive elements” within government to destroy the multi-party politics in Nigeria, the dividends of good governance he claimed the APC brought to Nigerians remained indelible.
While highlighting what he described as the good works of the APC in Ondo State, he urged the people to troop out and vote for Tinubu and other APC candidates at the Presidential and National Assembly election coming up on Saturday, February 25.
Marcus bears the light, and he beams it everywhere. He's a good governance and decent society advocate. He's The ICIR Reporter of the Year 2022 and has been the organisation's News Editor since September 2023. Contact him via email @ [email protected]