CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele
By Our Reporter
CIvil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has called for the prosecution of the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele for the dissappearance of the new naira notes.
The group on Tuesday, added that the sudden disappearance of newly designed N200, N500 and N1000 banknotes exposed “the blatant failure of the CBN Governor and his not-well-thought out naira redesigned policy.
HURIWA in a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, who called for his immediate prosecution, questioned why Nigerians no longer see the three newly redesigned banknotes immediately after the March 3 judgement of the Supreme Court that old notes must remain in circulation till December 31, 2023.
The group held that the sudden disappearance of the new notes showed that CBN hoarded the money and deliberately subjected Nigerians to two months of hardship for sinister political reasons.
HURIWA, therefore, demanded the prosecution of Emefiele for inflicting untold hardship on over 200 million Nigerians, causing avoidable deaths and the failure of many businesses.
The group also accused CBN management of gross mismanagement and irresponsibility which he insisted, caused the nation’s economy so much loses and forced many small and medium-scale entrepreneurs to close shops while many human fatalities were recorded due to the enforced cash crunch.
“Barely one month after the reintroduction of old currency notes, many Nigerians have decried the unavailability of the new notes.
“This is even after the old currencies had been mopped up from circulation by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and unavailable for use by citizens for about two months before they were officially pumped into the system on Dec. 15, 2022.
The Supreme Court on March 3 also nullified the Federal Government’s naira redesign policy, declaring it as an affront to the 1999 Constitution.”
Onwubiko said: “We demand the prosecution of the CBN Governor for consistently breaching the Supreme Court’s judgment on the new Naira notes which is that both should circulate simultaneously but evidently, the CBN has hidden the new notes and is circulating old, sickly and smelly, toxic old notes only.”
