The Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily halted the move by the Federal Government to ban the use of the old naira notes from February 10, 2023.
By Nchee Nwabunnia
The Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily halted the move by the Federal Government to ban the use of the old naira notes from February 10, 2023.
A seven-member panel led by Justice John Okoro, halted the move of the Federal Government in a ruling in an exparte application brought by three northern states of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara.
All the three states are governed by governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The states argued that there has been a shortage in the supply of the new naira notes in Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara States and that citizens who have dutifully deposited their old naira notes have increasingly found it difficult and sometimes next to impossible to access new naira notes to go about their daily activities.
The further maintained that the CBN policy is imposing a lot of hardship on Nigerians and insisted that the ten-day extension by the Federal Government is still insufficient to address the challenges of Nigerians swapping their old Naira notes for new ones.
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The case has been adjourned to Wednesday, February 15, 2023. This is an exparte application, meaning that the case has not been closed. The CBN still has room to argue its case on the merits of the currency swap.
Following the CBN resolve to suspend the use of some of the Naira notes, print and introduce new notes of the affected 200, 500 and 1000 denominations, too many arguments have been going on for and against the policy. The CBN’s primary reason for the introduction of the new notes being that there are too many of those notes hoarded in homes of the rich and thereby kept out of circulation.
The amount of the naira notes that returned into the banking system in a matter of weeks following the policy was a clear indication that the CBN was right and that the policy needed to be pursued to a logical conclusion. The 31st January 2023 initial deadline forced all returnable old naira notes into the bank; An act that threw all major hoarders, especially politicians into confusion. They were left in a dilemma of not knowing how to go about returning billions of cash, which they cannot defend the source to the bank; An act that will attract the attention of the EFCC and an act that will destroy their political might which is embedded in vote buying.
While conceding to the poor implementation of the policy, especially as regards the unavailability of the new notes, a seeming case of economic sabotage going by the apex banks blame of the commercial banks and the supporting video clips, I do believe that the policy has more merits the demerits.
This has become a case of when you fight corruption, corruption fights back. It appears that the moneybag politicians are fighting dirty to ensure that their stacked old naira notes do not go to waste as the new February 10th 2023 deadline is three days away. The primary concern of these moneybag politicians is not losing the billions of naira they have stashed away but ensuring they have access to cash for the purpose of vote buying.
Considering that the CBN policy had taken away as many old notes as possible out of circulation, most probably destroyed them as required by law, the primary concern of any good citizen should be pushing for the release of the new notes rather than insisting that the old ones be retained. The court especially the Supreme Court should understand that making judgement on an issue which has been taken over by event may amount to an effort in futility. This will tend to be so if the CBN comes up with the resolution that the old naira notes that returned to the bank had been destroyed and the negligible few in circulation inconsequential. The Supreme Court should help Nigeria to deal with this notorious age long issue of Naira hoarding and the associated vote buying rather than take position that will support it. If the court supports extension of deadline and several billions of Naira are returned into circulation from the homes of these criminal politicians through vote buying, what would the country gain. We cannot afford to sell the soul of our country yet again. It is better we weather the storm once and for all.
Cashless economy will save Nigeria from criminals of political extraction and that of kidnapping and banditry.
Nchee Nwabunnia wrote from Lagos
