A former senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, said President Muhammadu Buhari has limited knowledge of economics.
Sani stated this while speaking in an interview on Arise TV on Tuesday.
He expressed worry that the naira redesign policy has brought suffering to Nigerians.
According to him, there should have been a wide consultation beyond getting approval from the president before the introduction of the policy, noting that the country is in “a man-made economic turbulence.”
He said, “But what is wrong with this policy is that there should have been a wide consultation.
“It’s not simply about the CBN governor going to the president to get his approval over an issue that I believe the president of the country has limited knowledge of because he is not an economist.
“Secondly, I expected that before such a decision was made, there could have been a wide consultation with the national assembly and also the civil societies.
“By doing that, you are carrying the whole country along, and then ideas will crystallize, problems that may arise will be predicted, and they can be solved.”
“But for now, all that we have known is that the governor of the central bank has made it very clear that all he needed was the approval of Mr. President, and then he got it, and now everyone is paying the price.
“Well, to be fair, if this redesign of the naira and the cashless policy are about combating or containing vote-buying, that is a very good initiative.”
“But the fallout or the consequences of it on the other side is that people are suffering, and you don’t know which of the notes to accept.”
“They will tell you today you can use the old notes, but when you go to buy things, the money is not available, and if you have to use the cashless system, sometimes the alert doesn’t come in time, and as such, the whole transaction in the country has become a problem.”
“Even our communities in the border areas now are using currencies like the cefa and other currencies from other countries, and as we have heard, people in rural areas have resorted to trading by barter.”
“So, we have just gotten ourselves into an economic turbulence that is man-made and designed, and then it could have been avoided.”
“There was a time when we raised our voice and said you can redesign the naira, you can implement cashless policy, but why don’t you get ideas from the civil society, from traders, from marketers, from industrialists, from the economists, from the general public, so that we would all be carried along and then everyone will now give their own input on how these issues can be tackled?”
“And how can the people that have paraded themselves as experienced in managing finance, banks, and whatever get us into this kind of situation?”
