The Governor of Kaduna State Nasiru El Rufai has disclosed that politicians who were the prime targets of the naira redesign policy were not affected at all as they have already found a way to exploit the situation.
In an interview with BBC Hausa, El Rufai revealed that an unnamed governor was able to get 500 million naira of new naira notes days before the first deadline.
“It is not wrong to change currencies, every country do but you can not change it at this season of elections and give this limited time, where in this world that ever happened?” El Rufai asked.
He continued: “Politicians and big businessmen who are targeted by the policy have their ways of accessing the new notes, some of them own the banks, but what of poor, petty traders?
“All APC governors met on the issue, we saw how people suffer, we support the change of currency but time should be extended to months.
“We said let CBN, banks managers and we governors sat and discussed the issue, let’s work together and have a proper plan on how to go about it, we should have plans to follow people to their homes, villages and change the notes for them but not forcing them to go to banks which take some of them a hundreds kilometers.
“I tell you this change does not affect politicians, they have their money and they are prepared, they know how to access the new notes, it is poor don’t have ways, even yesterday we were told one of the governors was given 500 millions of the new notes.”
The Kaduna state governor did not hold back when he said that it was not a well thought out plan and it had not affected the people that were targeted.
