Naira Swap Policy: Southern governors kick, blasts Emefiele

The Chairman of Southern Governors Forum and the governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu said, the naira swap policy of the Godwin Emefiele-led Central Bank of Nigeria has been erroneous and miscalculated.

He said the error of judgement on the part of policy makers has made it fatal with regards to the implementation of the policy.

Akeredolu who is serving his second term of office said, the nation is groaning under naira scarcity which is ocassioned by the swap policy, noting that there was hardly anyone who contends with either the statutory functions of the Central Bank of Nigeria or the occupier of the office of its Governor, one of which is the monetary policy.

He added that it was a fact that President Muhammadu Buhari has executive power to exercise in the circumstance that called for it.

According to him, the policy has been woeful despite the contrary claim by the CBN, governor.

His words: “The increasing gale of violence sweeping through the country, portends danger to the current democratic governance.

“It can, however, not be the original intendment of the drafters of the relevant statutes that the implementation of any policy should occasion widespread hardship and pervasive agony in the land.

“The safety of the people is the supreme law. Any measure, purportedly designed to ameliorate their conditions, must not reduce the entire populace to a beggarly existence. There is pervasive discontent in the land.

“A policy, presented as currency swap, must not be construed by both the reasonable members and people of average intelligence in the society to convey the deplorable impression of contrived subterfuge manifest in the official confiscation of legitimate deposits of the people in banks, as a countermeasure against electoral malfeasance, terrorism and banditry.

“Desirable as the policy appears to be, its implementation excites curiosity as regards the real motive of its drivers, especially at this time when the conduct of general elections is almost here.

“The suffering of the masses, occasioned by the non-availability of new notes to replace the old ones, equally decreed out of existence by presidential fiat in contravention of the CBN Act, 2007, could have been averted if the strategy of a gradual and systematic withdrawal of the old currency notes had been adopted.”