Obaseki: Plan to redesign naira notes is purely political

Godwin Obaseki, Edo governor, says the federal government’s plan to redesign the country’s currency notes is a political move. 

Obaseki said this on Wednesday while inaugurating the Edo Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) women campaign council at the presidential campaign secretariat in Benin. 

On October 26, Godwin Emefiele, governor of the CBN, announced the plan to redesign the naira notes to control money supply and aid security agencies in tackling illicit financial flow.

The Edo governor said instead of the federal government planning to redesign the naira notes, the focus should be on engineering the economy to end hunger. 

“They say we should all bring our naira and give it to them because they want to change it for us. Is that our priority now? How does changing of currency reduce the price of food in the market? They say they want to change our currency and dollars are going higher every day. We can’t even see dollars again,” Obaseki said.

“I am an economist and I can tell you categorically that this policy by the CBN and federal government has no basis in economics. There is no reason to do this; this is purely political. When you decide to change your currency in a manner, 30 days before an election, all you can deduce is that it’s purely political.

“The urgency for us is how to get food for our citizens to remove starvation and hunger from the land; the urgency is on how to maintain discipline in our monetary policy so that we can manage our foreign exchange rate because we are import-dependent.”