The All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, PCC, says the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) naira re-design is ill timed.
Bayo Onanuga, Director, Media and Publicity APC PCC said this in a statement on Friday in Abuja.
“The naira re-design policy has become a burden too heavy to bear by Nigerians,” Onanuga said, adding many Nigerians were suffering to get their monies from their banks because of the policy.
He faulted former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s opposition to the call on the CBN to extend the Feb. 10 deadline for the naira notes swap.
“The sabotage of the naira notes swap and fuel scarcity in parts of the country have caused untold hardship to millions of Nigerians.
“The development have revealed the true character of the PDP and Atiku as public enemy number one.
“Since the CBN introduced the current cash-limit and new naira notes swap policies, Atiku Abubakar and the PDP maintained opportunistic silence.
“The is with the hope that they will benefit from the discomfort the policies would create to Nigerians and the resentment it would generate for the APC,” Onanuga said.
He added: “While Atiku and PDP were in bed with the saboteurs and fifth columnists among the operators of Money Deposit Banks and oil marketers who created the current logjam to force the outcome of the Feb. 25 presidential election in favour of the former Vice-President.
“Our candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate courageously pitched his tent with the poor masses who have been most negatively impacted by the antics of these evil doers.
“Having realised they have lost the initiative and their antics exposed to Nigerians by Tinubu at the APC presidential campaign rally in Abeokuta.
“Atiku made a half-hearted appeal to CBN to slightly extend the deadline for the currency swap.”
Mr Onanuga said the APC PCC was at a loss to understand what informed the current call of Atiku on CBN not to extend the Feb. 10 deadline.
This, he said, was in spite of the unmitigated hardship still being faced by many Nigerians who could not meet their basic daily needs as a result of lack of cash from banks and the empty ATM.
“Anyone who lives in Nigeria and not Dubai and visited banks and ATM locations will feel sad that the CBN is making Nigerians suffer for its badly timed naira swap policy.
“The bank’s latest fire brigade approach in approving payment of N20,000 at the counter is far from offering relief as queues are still long, agony and frustrations widening,” he said.
According to him, is an invitation to riots, adding that the CBN poorly implemented policy had turned Nigerians to destitutes because they could not access their own money in their bank accounts.
He said that people could not get money to give their kids to school or pay for daily needs at corner shops, fruit shops, including buying newspapers while transactions in market places had plummeted.
He added that the CBN governor gave insight into the nature of the problem when he recently revealed in Daura, Katsina State that out of the N3.3 trillion in circulation, only N500 billion was in bank vaults.
“So far, only N1.9trillion had been received by the banks for swap, but people are not getting the new notes to spend, thus triggering the huge anger in the land against Godwin Emefiele, the CBN Governor.
“We thus find it ludicrous that a man who joined the call for an extension of the deadline last week is championing a new campaign against further extension.
“Because he feels the suffering of Nigerians will serve his own political end to become president at all cost
“Atiku said callously that there should be no further postponement of the new naira regime after the expiration of the Feb. 10 deadline,” Mr Onanuga said.
He said Mr Atiku had anchored his objection on the wrong reason that the CBN and the presidency should be steadfast, saying that the merits of the new naira policy far outweigh the little inconvenience Nigerians were currently experiencing.
Mr Onanuga added that in passing off the suffering of Nigerians as little inconvenience, Atiku had shown himself as a political leader disconnected from the Nigerian people that he was campaigning to govern.
“Certainly, living comfortably in Dubai for many years has drained Atiku of all empathy.
“This is a man who wants to be president and does not mind even if he presides over the graves of Nigerians as long as his inordinate ambition materialises in line with the prophecy of his marabouts.
“It is crystal clear to every Nigerian of conscience now that Atiku Abubakar and PDP do not mean well for our country.
“The PDP and Atiku have become desperadoes who will wish calamity on the country as long as it makes them win an election they are destined to lose, spectacularly,” Mr Onanuga said.
He added that Nigerians must reject Atiku at the poll on Feb.25.
