Northern group urges Buhari to sack Emefiele, team over naira redesign

Threatens protest in North, FCT

Concerned Northern Forum (CNF) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Dr. Godwin Emefiele, and his team within seven days over controversies trailing the plan to redesign the nation’s currency.

CNF, during a press briefing at the Arewa House in Kaduna, yesterday, said failure to meet their demand would force it to stage massive protests across the Northern region and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The group’s spokesperson, Abdulsalam Kazeem, argued that redesigning the naira bills would not improve people’s lives.

According to him, the prices of food and other daily needs have increased beyond control, and the probability of an increase in crime rate is high due to the bad financial policies of the apex bank.

He said: “We must state categorically that the large population of Nigerians have lost confidence in the current leadership of the CBN to initiate and introduce policies that would improve the economy of our dear nation. Therefore, we maintain our earlier position, including ‘the immediate suspension of the whole process of the new naira design; immediate sack of Godwin Emefiele and his entire team for failing Nigerians, having been the longest serving governor in recent time; and prosecution of those behind this wicked agenda.”

“Failure to meet our demands within the next seven working days will lead to a massive protest across our region and the FCT.”

The forum asserted that redesigning of the three denominations of the naira by CBN, owing to the reason that the banks were not in possession of as much as 80 per cent of the notes in circulation is not only a joke but a total rejection of the realities of its many failed policies.

“It is, in fact, impossible to find all monies in a country in the bank at a particular time because of the distance of banks and the peculiarities of every business and people. There is also no law against saving and keeping one’s money and transacting business outside the vaults of the banks. Banks have always been perceived by our people as the creation of the elite to run businesses and make profits from the savings of the ordinary masses.

“The redesigning of the naira bills will neither bring any good nor improve the lives of our people and region but will bring hardship, which the vast majority of our people are already witnessing,” CNF stated.

It expressed concern over the insistence of Emefiele on the redesigning “without recourse to the resultant negative effect.”