The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, on Thursday stood against President Muhammadu Buhari over the declaration that only the old N200 note will remain legal tender along with the new N1000 and N500 notes.
el-Rufai said the decision of President Buhari and the Central Bank of Nigeria ran foul of the Supreme Court and therefore unconstitutional.
He said, “The address by the President earlier this morning limiting the legal tender status of old notes to only N200 amounts to total disregard and disobedience of the ruling of February 8th which was extended further yesterday by the Supreme Court. The misguided action of the Attorney-General to mislead the President into engaging in this public violation of the order of the highest court of the land shows how desperate the policy architects are to cause national chaos, by showing open contempt for the judiciary.”
He explained that the decision to recognise only N200 as legal tender till April that the President announced was offered to the state governments as part of proposals for an out-of-court settlement three days ago.
“The Federal Government asserted that this was offered because all the ‘old’ N1,000 and N500 notes had been destroyed. We rejected the offer and proved to the officials that not a single higher denomination note had been destroyed. We also believe that circulating N200 only to be inadequate in alleviating the suffering that we see every day. We insisted that all the components of the Supreme Court order should be complied with,” he said
Assuring the people of the state, el-Rufai said all arrangements would be made to ensure that no one looses a kobo.