Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has justified why the governors are against the Central Bank of Nigeria’s CBN’s naira redesign policy.
The governor dismissed claims that governors are against the policy because it would prevent them from inducing voters during the upcoming election.
El-Rufai spoke in an interview with BBC Hausa on Monday.
According to him, the redesign of the currency was not enough to stop the incentives to voters.
He said that the governors opposed the policy as a result of the hardship it had caused citizens, adding that the policy had turned the Congress of All Progressives against the citizens.
He said: “We reviewed this policy and the difficulties it put people in and the hateful sentiment Nigerians developed towards the APC because Nigerians blame the APC and the people who introduced the policy did so for our party to lose in the competition. ”. choice.
“After we finished our review, we agreed that the ruling of the supreme court should be followed, which is that the old and new bills should be used until the case is over.
“Did the buying of votes start today? Why wasn’t money redesigned sooner? Because right now? Second, is vote buying only done with naira? It can be bought with dollars, euros, CFA and food can be given to voters.
“There are several ways through which you can buy votes. You can’t get money out of politics, but you can reduce it.”
He argued that the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, in collusion with members of the opposition party sold the policy to the president.
El-Rufai said: “We are not against this vote-buying policy. I swear to God, we are against it because of how we saw people suffer, not because of the election.
“The people who drove the redesign of naira are not APC members. You see Godwin Emefiele, it was the PDP that brought him in. The others with whom the decision was made with them know them and when the time comes, they will expose them because they are not members of our party.
“God willing, on Saturday the masses will retaliate against those who want to drag our party to the ground. who were given the opportunity by the APC to get more money than would be enough to do the shopping because some of them knew that shopping for their homes was hard for them eight years ago, but now they have more money than they imagine.”
El-Rufai said the president had refused to reverse the policy because he had been told that governors are thieves.
He said: “Because a president is a person who believes in the people, and we (the governors), our image has tarnished. You have been told that governors are thieves that’s why we are against naira redesign policy.
“Even if we go up to him and say ‘our leader, you’ve been lied to in this place,’ and he says I understand and he’ll take action on it, by the time we leave, he’ll be told not to take any action.” extent. Each person is a nine out of ten. In that sense, we believe the president was wrong.”
