As the scarcity of old and new naira notes continues unabated, the gove.rnors of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara states, Nasir el-Rufai, Yahaya Bello and Bello Matawalle respectively, have sued the Federal Government.
The governors are seeking an order from the Supreme Court, restraining the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, from implementing the naira redesign policy.
Filing the action through their respective Attorneys-General, the three states averred that the scarcity and non-availability of both the old and the new naira notes is affecting the people of their states, especially the poor.
The plaintiffs in the suit are the three Attorneys-General and Commissioners for Justice of the three states, while the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, is the sole respondent.
The states, filing an ex-parte motion through their lawyer, Mr. AbdulHakeem Uthman Mustapha, SAN, are urging the Supreme Court to grant them an interim injunction stopping the Federal Government, either by itself or acting through the CBN, the commercial banks, or its agents, from carrying out its plan of ending the timeframe within which the now older versions of the 200, 500 and 1000 denominations of the naira may no longer be legal tender on February 10, 2023.
They said, “Unless this honourable court intervenes, the governments and people of Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara states will continue to go through a lot of hardship and would ultimately suffer great loss as a result of the insufficient and unreasonable time within which the Federal Government is embarking on the ongoing currency redesign policy.”
The states further averred that there has been a shortage in the supply of the new naira notes in Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara states, adding that citizens who have dutifully deposited their old naira notes in the banks have increasingly found it difficult and sometimes next to impossible to access new naira notes to go about their daily activities and transactions.
Insisting that the CBN policy is imposing a lot of hardship on Nigerians, the states insisted that the 10-day extension by the Federal Government is still insufficient to address the challenges of swapping the old naira notes for new ones.
They added, “That the majority of the indigenes of the plaintiffs’ states, who reside in the rural areas, have been unable to exchange or deposit their old naira notes as there are no banks in the rural areas where the majority of the population of the states reside.
“Most people in rural areas of the plaintiffs’ states do not have bank accounts and have so far been unable to deposit their life savings, which are still in the old naira notes.
“There is restiveness amongst the people in the various states because of the hardship being suffered by the people, and the situation will sooner than later degenerate into the breakdown of law and order.
“The plaintiff state governments cannot stand by as they are duty-bound to protect citizens in their states and prevent the breakdown of law and order.
“If the Federal Government of Nigeria had given sufficient and reasonable time for the naira redesign policy, all the current hardship and loss being experienced by the plaintiffs’ state governments, as well as people in the various states would have been avoided.”
