Reps Majority Leader, Doguwa, fears naira redesign will affect APC chances in 2023 elections

The Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Ado Doguwa, said on Thursday Nigerians have identified the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the cause of their sufferings following the crises trailing the redesign of the naira notes.

Doguwa, who is the chairman of the House Adhoc Committee on the Naira Redesign, Cashless Policy, and Naira Swap, stated this in a chat with State House correspondents after he led members of the committee to a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.

He expressed fear that the redesign of the naira notes initiated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would affect APC’s chances in this month’s election.

The APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had during his campaign rally in Ogun State last month told the party supporters that the naira and fuel scarcity was planned by saboteurs to undermine his chances in the election.

Doguwa, however, added that public officials elected on the platform of the APC were not immune from the hardship caused by the policy.

He asked the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to comply with the president’s directive and make the new N500, N1,000, and the old N200 notes available to Nigerians.

Buhari had during his nationwide broadcast on Thursday morning announced that only the old N200 notes would remain legal tender until April 10.

The majority leader warned that lawmakers would deploy all the instrumentality of the law to ensure the CBN obeys the president’s orders.

READ ALSO: Naira scarcity planned in 2022, designed to foist interim govt on Nigeria – El-Rufai

Doguwa said: “We came to say to Mr. President that despite his broadcast this morning, in spite of the fact that he has told the CBN to make some amendments to take some new steps to ameliorate the hardship, it is not yet Uhuru.

“For instance, the Central Bank has been directed to make money available. But how do we ensure that Mr. President’s directive is being carried out? That cannot be guaranteed.

“Mr. President addressed us and addressed the CBN governor once again to our face and we used the opportunity to also tell the CBN governor that ‘you must go around to implement the directive of the President as contained in the letters of his speech.

“Of course, while we are discharging our constitutional right to oversight every institution of government, we must ensure that the directive of Mr. President is carried out to the letter.

“Failure to do that, we must involve every instrumentality of the law, legislative instrumentality, to ensure that Presidential orders are being abided by and ensure that the laws of the land are also being respected.”

“I need to have N70m in hard copy. The law has permitted it and as I speak to you, I don’t have it. ATM stations have turned into wrestling grounds.

“I told Mr. President that the policy is against the ruling party, my party because it’s a government policy, a government of the APC.

“And Nigerians at this time of elections are now looking at my government coming up with an unpopular policy.

“Some of us see a lot of good things about the policy, but our worry as members of the ruling party is, why now?

“30-40 days to elections you come out with a policy that is not widely accepted by Nigerians and whether we like it or not that will be seen as the program of the government.

“So those of us in the APC are not happy about it. Why will you insist on cashless when even INEC has raised a lot of fears that without cash is needed to carry out activities by the electoral commission.”

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