A former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Bayo Adelabu, has faulted current Naira redesign policy initiated by the apex bank, saying the policy is ill-timed.
Adelabu, who is the governorship candidate of the Accord in Oyo State, also said the current scarcity of Naira and fuel are signs that some people are hell-bent in disrupting forthcoming elections.
The former apex official stated this in Ibadan when he appeared on a live radio programme: “Political Circuit” monitored by our correspondent.
“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%.
“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,” Adelabu said.
Commenting on current fuel scarcity, the politician said Nigerians have not experienced this level of fuel scarcity in the past seven years, adding that it is hard to believe that it is not sabotage, considering the timing of the scarcity.
According to him, the government can deny the allegation of wanting to sabotage the election by easing 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?”, Adelabu queried.
He stressed that the price needs to be regulated, saying the hike is impacting negatively on Nigerians as cost of living increases astronomically.
