As scarcity of cash continues to bite hard, Accord Party has charged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to as a matter of urgency mandate commercial banks across the country to allow cash withdrawals at their bank counters to ease the long queue at the ATMs.
The National Chairman of the party, Mohammed Lawal Nalado made the call at the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, held on Tuesday in Abuja.
Nalado said although the new cash policy is good and will be beneficial to the people of Nigeria, it should not be made to allow citizens suffer.
He urged the Federal government and the CBN to do all it takes to save Nigerians from this present hardship.
“If you go to the rural area, the hardship is more than what we are experiencing in the urban areas. I am calling on the Federal government and the CBN to step in and make this money available for people to reduce the hardship.
“No matter what good policies we want to introduce to this country, I’m sure we are doing it for the benefit of Nigerians. Any policy that will put Nigerians in difficulty and serious problems like we are facing today, then that policy is not good enough”, he stressed.
The National Chairman also expressed worry that the scarcity of cash and petrol could also affect the smooth running of the general elections.
He said, “The problem is not only on money but also on petroleum. You can’t just get it, even if you get it, you don’t have money.
“On election day definitely there will be need for movement of materials from Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) offices to various election points. If there is no fuel, I doubt if that will be possible.
“So government should make sure that fuel is available everywhere and that money is available for people to be able to dispense.
“We are satisfied with the preparation level of INEC. We were at the INEC yesterday, we had a stakeholder meeting where all the eighteen political parties were invited, and part of the things we discussed, is the issue of conducting the election and INEC confirm to us the level of their preparedness but they too are in doubt in terms of availability of fuel and cash”.
