Naira Redesign: SWAGA Wants Old, New Notes To Co-exist Until After Elections

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Naira Redesign: SWAGA Wants Old, New Notes To Co-exist Until After Elections

The South-West Agenda for Asiwaju 2023 (SWAGA’23) has implored President Muhammadu Buhari to take urgent steps to address the suffering of Nigerians as a result of the Naira redesigning by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

It also urged the President to allow the old and new naira notes to co-exist as a means of easing the current suffering of Nigerians until May 2023 after the conduct of the general elections.

President Buhari had last week blamed banks for the harrowing experiences of Nigerians but asked Nigerians to give him seven days to resolve the crisis.

But speaking in an interview with DAILY INDEPENDENT, Otunba Bosun Oladele SWAGA’s National Secretary said the seven days proposed by the president may be too long as Nigerians are already protesting the hardship caused by the scarcity of the naira in parts of the country.

“The president should take an urgent decision now. Also, the old currency should co-exist with the new ones until May or June 2023 just like the National Assembly has advised. This will allow for a seamless transition from the old currency to the new ones” he said.

When asked if the cash crunch may negatively affect the conduct of the general elections, the SWAGA scribe said “The role of money in politics and campaign cannot be far-fetched. You need to pay your agents who are manning every polling unit”.

“You need to pay the people that will work for the party. You need to pay the transporters who will move people from the villages to polling units. If you don’t have money or petrol, it becomes a huge problem, if not impossible for us to have elections in those areas”.

“So, it is very important that anything that will scuttle this election and will lead to low turn-out of voters or engineer the contraption of the so-called Interim National Government, every such thing must be avoided by the federal government. Let’s have the election first”.

“I have listened to situations where they said the Naira redesigning was done to prevent politicians from corrupting the process by inducing voters with money.

“I believe that will not be possible if the security agencies and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission do their jobs. The Electoral Offences Laws and Acts can also take care of vote buying and other financial inducements on election day”.

“Policing electoral processes is a major task for security agencies and that is why each polling units have a deployment of adequate security agents. The government cannot really police the process from the executive arm”.

“The security agencies must be allowed to do their job regarding that. But whatever is going to affect the election negatively must be avoided in the interest of the well-being of the country”.