Governor Muhammad Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa State has described the Supreme Court restraining the Federal Government from implementing the February 10 deadline of the old naira notes to end the legal tender as a welcome development.
A statement by Habibu Nuhu Kila, Special Adviser on Media and Public Relations to the governor said Mr. Badaru spoke in an exclusive interview with the Hausa Service of the Voice of America.
Governor Badaru said that economic activity in the country has almost collapsed due to the current situation. He said that with the decision of the apex court, people can now conduct normal business with old and new naira notes.
Governor Jigawa called on Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to as a matter of urgency make sufficient amount of new naira notes available to the public to alleviate the current distress in the country.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the CBN not to end the use of the old naira notes on February 10.
According to a report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), a seven-member court panel, presided over by John Okoro, gave the interim order amid the acute shortage of the newly redesigned N200, N500, and N1,000 currency notes.
The court gave the order temporarily, canceling the CBN’s February 10 deadline to end the validity of the old version of the paper money based on the ex parte application. submitted by the three northern states controlled by the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, has also publicly criticized the policy when he stopped campaigning.
The applicants, on February 3, filed an application at the Supreme Court praying to stop the CBN from using the old currency notes on February 10 as threatened by the bank.
He cited the misery of the lack of new bank notes that many Nigerians are dealing with.
The application, being ex parte, was not given to the Attorney General of the Federation who was prosecuted in the case as representative of the Federal Government.
Only the applicant’s lawyer, Abdulrakeem Mustapha, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), was heard by the court.
Mr Okoro, after hearing the applicant’s lawyers on Wednesday morning, granted the application “as prayed for,” a decision his panel said came after “careful consideration”.
He issued an interim order “barring the federal government through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) or commercial banks from delaying or specifying or terminating the February 10, time frame by which the current old version of the 200, 500 and 1,000 naira denominations may become worthless which is valid, pending hearing and determination of the motion with a notice for interlocutory injunction”.
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