President of Centre for Leadership and Justice, Mr Emmanuel Umohinyang, speaks on the implementation of the naira redesign policy that has pitched some governors of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) against the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria, among other sundry political issues in this interview with Linus Aleke

The leadership of the APC decided that they are not with the President on this naira swap issue that has caused serious hardship amongst Nigerians, why do you think a reassuring message keeps coming a few days before the election on the candidate and also on Nigerians?

I think the reassurance aspect of the president is evolving as a result of insinuations that has beclouded the political space in the recent past that the body language of the president does not suggest that he is supporting his own party’s candidate. Now, the president has a duty, don’t forget that this is a president who struggles on many occasions to be elected. It was the merger that happened in 2015 that led to his emergence at the poll that year. So, when you now have a situation where people think he would have been the president who will pinpoint a successor and then, the party structure will fall under, he did not do that. Now, a candidate has emerged on the platform of the party, but he is not showing the commitment that every sitting president that we have had from 1999, showed when the president tried to impose a choice, on either the party or the country, in the eyes of the political watchers. But I think that Muhammadu Buhari is one man who I can speak about as a person, having worked very closely with him. I can say that from the word go, the process of selecting an APC candidate at eagle square enjoys his support and that was why all manner of pressure that was put on him by forces within and outside was resisted by him. Because at a point we have to tell him, look, 28 presidential aspirants, Your Excellency, you must stand your ground and be neutral in this process. Let them go to the field and slug it out. So, that he will not be accused by any other person or other aspirants of supporting a particular aspirant and ignoring them and I think the president was, in fairness to him fair enough to say all of you go in there and slug it out with delegates, whoever that emerges, I am going to support. He was at Eagle Square and waited patiently till 2am before he left and came back at dawn to ensure the conclusion of the process. Now, when the party candidate emerged, he handed over the flag of the party to the candidate as the leader of the party. The challenge evolved when people thought that he was going to adopt Olusegun Obasanjo’s idea of a do-or-die election. He doesn’t have to, he has done well, and all he wanted was that the party has put out its achievements. Therefore, all that was needed was for the candidates to key into those achievements and act on them but the president, when he was elected in 2015, never told anybody that he was an angel hence, there are areas the government has made mistakes, which he looks up to Tinubu to correct some of those mistakes and then continue with the progressive governance that he had already entrenched its foundation from 2015 till now.

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Now this naira swap policy, naira redesign, has created a lot of hardship in the country, why do you think the president chose to use this period to implement it?

You see, every good policy does not necessarily have to have a particular period of implementation. It is only a bad policy that you can query the implementation period. However, it is one thing for you to have a good policy and another thing for those lieutenants of yours to activate its implementation in line with your vision. The president is one man who submits to the superior argument. He is not a man who sits down and claims that he knows it all. So, therefore, when this policy idea was shared with him, he bought into it because he is not a first-timer in it. He has done it in 1984, and he felt oh! Since we were overdue by law to change our currency, ok. But let us take this route, but one of the conditions he gave was that we cannot do this by going outside to print. It has to be within the country and the governor of CBN gave all this assurance and created those beautiful indices of what he thinks this policy was going to achieve. But you know, the human race has a way of hiding their real motive and then putting forth the shadow motive which the president keys into. So, in this regard, yes, the president meant well that this policy was just to change and improve our financial standing but the implementation aspect of it has now shown the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob. I think that is where the party and the governors of the party raised that concern. Even the candidate of the party should have said, let me play safe, let me not offend the system, let me not annoy the president. But Tinubu has been known for challenging the situation of this kind as governor of Lagos State, so, when he voiced out and called out the attention of this government which he is part of, and said that some of these things ought not to be done like this. The people are suffering, Nigerians are going through pain, and the opponents quickly fed on it and say oh! It is a beautiful policy and then you ask yourself, are the opponents happy that Nigerians are suffering? Are they happy that for the first time in our lifetime, we are seeing people using their money to buy their money? It is absurd and these are some of the things they have raised against the policy. When you go to the north, it is there you will appreciate the pain our people are going through because they don’t enjoy the luxury of having several banks within a few kilometres as we have in the south. These are the areas where in some cases two banks may be all you have in a whole state. How do you address this kind of issue when you now look at the timeline that was given, it is mind-boggling, and I think the party, I must admit, the APC is in the right direction, even though I am not a member. The governor who has also risen against this policy is also correct, they are not against the policy per se, and they are against the poor implementation of the policy by the CBN governor.

From tip bits, this policy may have affected the chances of APC, so people say, do you think APC will have its way on Saturday because a lot of people have negative feelings, it has taken down the rating of the present government and by extension the fortune of the APC in the fourth coming elections, what is your reaction to this?

I can say that 90 per cent of Nigerians have made up their minds on who to vote for as of January 2023. Will it affect the chances of the party, I don’t think so, and maybe the few undecided voters who have gone through this pain may take the back sit to review their position on the coming elections. However, I also want to say that I am not sure that the reaction of the candidate of the APC against the poor implementation of this policy was narrowly in the interest of the election. He was deeply concerned about the pains, poor Nigerians were going through in accessing their money from the banks. Not necessarily because he was making that in other to enjoy the sympathy of Nigeria, so, that he can also be voted for. So, we must at that point know that we are talking about the country first before we can talk about the elections. That was why I told Nigerians, do not to suffer injury for the sake of any politician. Don’t be violent, I am sure that the policy that has been well criticised will be reviewed. The president is a listening president, I know him that. I also, know that this is one man who will not sit down and churn out the policy that will create pain for Nigerians. He will never do that, however, when you now begin to look at certain challenges that have come with the implementation of the policy you can then point to certain suspicion. One, in the last couple of weeks the CBN governor has dished out so many directives on payment advice to banks, and depositors bank. First, he tells you how much you are supposed to collect per day at the counter, he tells you how much you are supposed to pick from the ATM. The next week he changes the policy and gives all sought of the directive. At a point I felt, is it that the man is possessed by an evil spirit because he was not forthcoming with what was the true direction that Nigerians should expect so that people don’t wake up in the morning and hear you telling them a different thing. Now, he went ahead and started inciting Nigerians against the depositor banks. That the banks are the ones sabotaging the effort of the CBN, to smoothly implement the policy and the question I ask is who regulates the depositor banks, the CBN. Let Emefiele point to Nigerians what he has done to those who he has identified as saboteurs of this policy. Who and who has he dragged before the court? He has not done anything in that regard so you begin to incite Nigerians against the banks and that was why some Nigerians started attacking banks because they felt that the money is in the bank and they are the ones hoarding the money and not releasing it to them. But I can tell you because I had spoken to about 4 different MDs of banks, they confirm what they receive from the CBN and I had the excuse that this is one of the reasons for this policy and I had shared it with Mr. President. That one of the reasons for this policy is to checkmate politicians from vote buying and I laugh over it. If you think the policy is going to stop politicians from vote buying you have already encouraged them to buy votes at a cheaper price because it will simply mean that if a politician was supposed to pay N10,000, you have made the scarcity a weapon in their hands and they will buy votes with N1000. I am aware of a politician who had bought heaps of yam. Tubers of yam are going to be used as a means of buying votes in the coming election. So, what have you ended up doing? These politicians have gotten this money as of 12 December last year. The politicians you are trying to deprive of vote buying have accessed this money from depositor bank, 12th of December last year. The president launched this policy on the 9th and it was officially released to the public on the 15th. Politicians have gotten this money three days before it was officially released Nigerians. So, which politicians are you talking about, you cannot tie these politicians on this issue because they are thinking way ahead of what he is doing and that is the point that I have made, that Mr. President must come back and review the policy, the president cannot with due respect to him, sit on appeal against the decision of a supreme court. He is bound by that decision, he is under that decision, and he has a duty under section 287 sub 1 to obey to enforce to give compelling effect to all decisions of the Supreme Court. Whether it favours him or not he has a duty to do that else, the president will be setting a bad precedent, he will be taking us back to the 1999 and 2007 eras of Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar’s administrations. Where Lagos State’s federal allocation was stopped for 15 months. In clear violation of the judgement of the Supreme Court. Obasanjo’s administration refused to release that allocation, it was late Musa Yar’Adua, and may God rest his soul who released that allocation to the Fashola’s administration. We cannot disobey the highest court in the land, then expect Nigerians to comply with the rule of law. The President went to London and said that he was a converted democrat and I believe him. I still believe him, but he must not allow the fifth columnist to ruin his last days in office. The president must stand up as a man that I know, a man of courage, and look at the bitter cola tree and say, look the fruits you produce are bitter by reversing this policy in line with the position of the court