The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called the existing severe scarcity of the newly introduced Naira notes in most banks across Nigeria as a huge threat to national security, and that the manifest inefficiency and ineffectiveness of governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria is a pointer to why Nigeria needs an independent Governor of Central Bank and not a politically tainted and compromised head.
HURIWA is of the opinion that the haste with which the redesigning project of the national currency was handled by the Governor of CBN and President Muhammadu Buhari is shrouded in a politically organized witch-hunt and confusion.
The statement said: “How can a governor of the CBN be carrying out such a monumental financial initiative about the same time that he couldn’t move freely due to fear of arrest by the Department of State Services on allegations of suspected financing of terrorism and also the governor is facing a court case in the USA allegedly filed by his brother in law over purported failed joint business ventures?
“Then again how is it that the CBN governor is going about this exercise as if he is targeting politicians thereby making an economic policy to become politically tainted, thereby exposing the otherwise national finance policy that is lofty to become polluted by political infighting even amongst the ruling All Progressives Congress under whose platform this same governor of CBN sought unsuccessfully to be made the handpicked Presidential candidate of APC?
“Is the CBN Governor waging a political vendetta but by so doing exposing millions of Nigerian commoners to unwarranted but excruciating hardships encountered in their frantic search for the artificially scarce new Naira notes which are sold from the backdoor by CBN and money deposit banks to politicians for votes buying?”
In a statement after HURIWA members “observed the organised chaos and rancorous situation of lack of new Naira notes and the attendant hardships experienced by millions of commoners in Aba, Abia State, Onitsha Anambra State, Lagos, Kano and Kafanchan in Kaduna State”, HURIWA called on the President Muhammadu Buhari “to do the needful to check the internal saboteurs within the banking system that are hijacking the new notes from CBN and selling to politicians and rich elites.”
HURIWA warned President Buhari “of possibility of this poorly implemented new naira policy instigating imminent street protests because of the untold starvation that this badly implemented redesigned Naira notes initiative that is an economic nightmare for poor Nigerians.”
(News Express)
