By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Accord governorship candidate in Oyo State and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Chief Bayo Adelabu has declared that the current Naira redesign policy by CBN is ill-timed.
Chief Adelabu who said this on Saturday while featuring on Fresh FM 105.9 Ibadan “South West Political Circuit” stated that there was no basis for rushing into the policy at this particular time.
The Accord governorship candidate pointed out that the current scarcity of Naira and fuel in the country are signs that some people are hell-bent on disrupting the forthcoming elections.
Chief Adelabu stressed that it is unfortunate that those behind the policy failed to look beyond politicians stacking up cash for the election, saying, ” ordinarily, the idea of introducing new currency started during my stay at CBN as DG Operations, but a lot of things stopped it and we are looking at the bigger picture.
“What is really the advantage of changing our currency, we need to look beyond the politicians stacking up cash for elections, for vote buying and this. How much do they really need to buy votes? How much is the total cash in circulation? They won’t need up to 5%”, he said.
Chief Adelabu added, “ that should not be the only reason for introducing new currency. And why introducing it at this time? It could easily have waited till election is over.
“You don’t want to target one or two people and you hit hundreds of other innocent people, which is why I said the mistake they made was that in introducing a new currency, it is supposed to run concurrently with the old currency for a minimum of six months, you will be issuing new currency, you will be stacking old currency,”
The Accord governorship candidate while speaking on the current fuel scarcity in the country, declared that Nigerians have not experienced this level of fuel scarcity in the past seven years, and that it is hard to believe that it is not sabotage, considering the timing of the scarcity.
Chief Adelabu emphasized the need for the government to do all within its power to ease the problem of fuel scarcity “between now and the election period.”
“Petrol is the easiest thing to flood the country because we’ve not been producing locally, we’ve been importing and those our import partners did not stop production and they’ve been receiving the foreign currency from sale of crude which they normally use to pay for the petrol product, so, why the scarcity?”
The Accord governorship candidate maintained that the price needs to be regulated, saying the hike is impacting negatively on Nigerians as cost of living increases astronomically.
