The Majority Leader of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Alhassan Doguwa has hailed President Muhammadu Buhari’s pronouncement on the recirculation of the old N200 notes, saying doing so will ease the hardship of Nigerians.
Doguwa, who is also the Chairman of the Special Adhoc Committee on Naira Redesign, Cashless Policy and Naira Swap, stated this after he led members of the committee to an audience with the President at the State House, Abuja.
He said that the committee was in the State house to see the President in spite of his broadcast and his directive to the CBN Governor to commend him for that, adding that more still needs to be done as “It is not yet Uhuru.”
According to him, “One important thing I want to stress is that Mr. President has addressed most of the issues we want to raise with him at the national broadcast this morning. But that notwithstanding, Mr. President allowed us to meet him believing the fact that the committee coming to him represents the institution of the National Assembly.
“And when you have issues to do with policies of government, you have matters that border on the lives and livelihood of our people, the best institution to speak for Nigerians is this institution, the National Assembly and in this case, the House of Representatives.
“What excites us is that when we met Mr. President, he was already on ground with those agencies that have something to do with this issue of naira redesign and naira swap. The CBN governor was there at his instance, the representative of the Ministry of Finance was there, the AGF was also represented there, the inspector General of Police was also there.
“We came to say to Mr. President that in spite of his broadcast this morning, in spite of the fact that he has told the CBN to make some amendments, to take some new steps to ameliorate the hardship this policy has already entrenched in our economy which is impacting negatively on the lives and livelihoods of Nigerians, we told Mr. President clearly that it is not yet Uhuru.
“For instance, the Central Bank has been directed to make money available, these new naira notes should be made available. But how do we ensure that Mr. President’s directive is being carried out? That cannot be guaranteed. Thank God that Mr. President addressed us and addressed the CBN governor once again to our face and we used the opportunity to also tell the CBN governor that ‘you must go around implementing the directive of the President as contained in the letters of his speech; not a matter of perception, not a matter of being professional. You cannot be more professional than the feelings of the actual players in the marketplace of the economy.
Working against the APC
The Majority Leader revealed that the committee told President Buhari that the Naira redesign policy was working against the governing All Progressives Congress, (APC,) and is making the party unpopular towards the general elections.
“No matter what policy you want to bring; no matter how good or decent that policy is, as long as it brings about hardship, pressure to the system, then that policy must be deemed to be otherwise. It is on this note that we told Mr President that we would continue to interface with relevant agencies especially the CBN Governor.
“Of course while we are discharging our constitutional right to oversight every institution of government, we must ensure that the directive of Mr. President is carried out to the letter, failure to do that we must involve every instrumentality of the law, legislative instrumentality, to ensure that Presidential orders are being abided by and ensure that the laws of the land are also being respected.
“With due respect can our local traders have access to the Central Bank? Certainly, policies are made and when those policies are seen to be quite impracticable and inimical to the development of the economy, those of us in the House of Representatives will blow the whistle.
“We have blown this whistle in the National Assembly and we have come this far to blow this whistle to Mr. President while thanking him for the new steps he has taken to cushion the effects of this unfortunate policy
“And now Nigeria is at the time of elections, people are now looking at my government coming up with an unpopular policy. It is unpopular because it does not matter if the policy may be seen to be professionally good. Some of us see a lot of things good about the policy, but our worry as members of the ruling party is why now? 30-40 days to elections you come out with a policy that is not widely accepted by Nigerians and whether we like it or not that will be seen as the program of the government.
Not happy
“So those of us in the APC are not happy about it and I believe some of my colleagues in other parties would not see this as a good policy. Not good because the timing is absolutely wrong,” he said.
Also present at the meeting with the President were the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, representative of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the Inspector-General of Police, the Director-General, Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, the Permanent Secretary, State House, Tijani Umar and the Economic Adviser to the President, Adedoyin Salami.
Lateefah Ibrahim
