KUNLE ADEGOKE, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, spoke with NPO Reports’ KAMIL OPEYEMI assessing President’s Muhammadu Buhari’s decision which allegedly runs foul of the Supreme Court’s decision in what is being alleged to be a violation of the rule of law. Excerpts:
How do you assess President Buhari’s nationwide broadcast over the new Naira controversy?
He has given a presidential speech which is aimed at addressing certain challenges confronting the nation. His performance, his ability to deliver on what he has promised so far may be questionable and may be unsatisfactory which I found largely to be so.
However, I will say that the speech of yesterday was attempted to address some of the challenges Nigerians are confronting with respect to the redesign of the Naira and unavailability of the new notes to the masses. And the ambition and intention behind the redesign of the Naira note is to make it impossible for politicians to be able to use cash to buy vote and to monetize the electoral process which have been largely undemocratic all the while because any mandate purchased by money cannot be said to be a popular mandate. So, on that basis I would say yes, that the intention of the government is good.
But, by the manner of performance, the manner of execution, the manner of the struggling, the intention is highly deplorable and it is unsatisfactory. It has inflicted more pains on Nigerians than what we have experienced in the past. I think to a large extent the speech is a presidential speech but it has not solved the challenges confronting Nigerians and we did not actually employ the president to give us national speeches but rather to address the challenges that are confronting us.
How do you explain his decision to allow only N200 as against Supreme Court order which is still subsisting?
Yes, I think the president needs a better source of legal advice . What do I mean by this? The decision of the Supreme Court is not restricted to a particular denomination.
It says both old notes and the new notes should be in circulation together and where the system have probably succeeded largely in mopping up the old notes and the notes mopped up are no longer available to the people, are no longer in circulation definitely, those old note would have been retrieved from the public space and probably destroyed can not be in circulation and it would be completely impossible for the CBN to go and reprint the old note when they are even incapable of printing sufficiently the quantity of new notes required for the masses for the people.
So, to that extent, I believe what the president has issued out is a directive that is inconsistent with the decision of the Supreme Court and to that extent, that directive of the president is a nullity in law.
In other words, you agree with those who accuse the president of arbitrariness?
That’s is what is true because the constitution says that the decisions of courts are binding on all and to a large degree, the decision to redesign the Naira or to change the currency, there is nothing unconstitutional about that. There is no constitution that has been violated in that regard. It’s a policy decision which is available to the executive to make. It is not something we can say is unconstitutional but there are many areas, many aspects in which the presidency has been found to have acted contrary to the constitution. Yes, the inability or the failure to make currency available to Nigerians is stultifying the economy and it is inflicting pains on the people and to that extent, Section 13 ,15, 16, 17 down to 21 which deal with the fundamental objectives and direct principle of policy, the president can be said to be acting contrary to the constitution because when you look at it, the social objectives as contained in section 17, the economic objective as contained in section 16 of the constitution have been greatly tampered by the failure of the government to make the currency available to the people. There are so many other areas that the constitution is being infringed by the decision and act of the president and it is high time the president addressed this issue to ensure that a government that came in on a mantra of promotion of rule of law is not found to be completely guilty to the violation of rule of law.
How do you think the President can redress this issue?
Well, what is required for the president to do right now is to comply with the directive of the Supreme Court with respect to the availability of old note and the duty to make them to operate to be in circulation side by side with the new note. Where this is done not withstanding whether it is N200, N500 or N1000, it would be in compliance with the directive of the Supreme Court which can now be said to be consistent with the constitution. Anything short of that will be a violation of the constitution which contrary to the duty of the president to comply with orders of court and to ensure the enforcement in the institution of every order of court until case is set aside.
The president may disagree with the decision of the court but that is his private opinion. He cannot use it to overturn the decision of a court of law. The President will have to go back and now make another directive to all agencies and parastatals of government that they should comply with the directive of the Supreme Court to allow both the old note and the new note to operate side by side. That would be the full compliance with the court.
Further, it is required and this is mandatory for the president to ensure that the CBN which has been flopping and fostering in term of the monetary policy implementation, is brought to its sanity. What is operating there in the CBN is complete insanity. The man who is heading the CBN doesn’t seem to have the capacity to carry out the mandate duty and the functions of that most important bank in the Federation because that is the banker to the bankers.
So, it is mandatory for the president to ensure that the CBN complies with the statutory and constitutional responsibilities that have been cast on that particular institution and to this extent, they must find an end to this cash crunch. Yes, it is highly desirable to go cashless to reduce the amount of cash in circulation. Yes, it is very very fundamental because that is why we have the NIN, the National Identity Number, the BVN. Why we have all these in place is to make sure that technology is used to document human identities within the space called Nigeria; to ensure that people use technology to deliver services to the people and to ensure that we use technology to detect and deter crime. And by the time somebody who is kidnapping knows that he can not get cash anymore, the only means that which ransom can be paid is through transfer then it becomes possible to trace. Any stupid person who allows his or her own account to be a repository for receiving such funds will now have to answer for such crimes.There would not be an excuse like “I did not know how the money got into my account.”
Another thing is we all have registered our sim cards. So, it makes it impossible for kidnapers and other men of the other world to keep operating if we are really using technology to track these various elements in our society. So, it is very imperative for the CBN to leave up to its statutory responsibility particularly banks to ensure that money is made available to the people not necessarily in cash but to ensure that at least the new note are made for daily transactions that can effectively take care of an average Nigerian need.
Another way for this to perform better is to ensure that the network services of the banks are performing optimally and that would enable people to carry out transactions. If you look at it, in the past few weeks since they began this cashless process, it has even been impossible to carry out online transactions to transfer money to people and pay by PoS and it seems as if the politicians they claimed they want to reduce their capacity to stock money, they have succeeded in frustrating the process. Criminal will always attempt to frustrate genuine changes. It is for the government, it is for the institution in charge of such process of change to ensure that it does its assignment very well to prevent such violations or sabotage by the people who are profiting from the whole thing. It is not an excuse that they are frustrating us or that some saboteurs are working against the system. That is why we elected you to fish out saboteurs, to frustrate saboteurs. So, when you feel you can’t do it, it is better for you to resign then get out of the way to allow somebody else to do the work.
The Supreme Court is billed to hear the matter on Wednesday Feb 22, what are your expectations from that sitting?
Well, my expectation as a lawyer is that both sides or all sides to the suit will argue their cases and when they argue their cases, probably the Supreme Court may be able to give its opinion immediately or may adjourn for its judgment or ruling as the case may be to another day. But, as far as this is concerned, it may not be something that upon the pronouncement of the Supreme Court, there will be Eldorado, everything will just suddenly change. No, it doesn’t work that way. Upon the decision of the Supreme Court delivered on a particular day, the government will have to put in place the process of implementing the decision of the Supreme Court to ensure that the suffering of Nigerians is ended. That is actually my expectation for that.
What impact do you think this whole fiasco will have on the overall reputation of the President who is due to leave office in May, just a few more months?
The man is on his way out. So, the general assessment from what I can see from the people, from many Nigerians, is that they are not satisfied. The election is around the corner. If Nigerians elect my party, APC, that means they are satisfied with our performance. It is only if Nigerians do otherwise that we can say they have expressed lack of confidence in the performance of the president together with the performance of my political party. But in the absence of that, we may not be able to give an opinion as to what Nigerians feel for now. It is only an election that can give an authoritative opinion as to the judgment of the masses on the government.