Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has described the proposed plan by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to redesign naira notes as political, saying the move was a ploy by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government to sway voters ahead of the 2023 general election.

Obaseki said the redesign of Nigeria’s currency should not be a priority when the majority of citizens are suffering from hunger, poverty, and economic hardship.

The governor said this while inaugurating the Edo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Women Campaign Council at the party’s presidential campaign secretariat in Benin, the state capital on Wednesday.

He said: “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? 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.

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“I am an economist and I can tell you categorically that this policy by the CBN and Federal Government has no basis in Nigeria’s economy. There is no reason to do this; the move is purely political as there is no urgency in changing our currency.

“The urgency is on 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.

“We can’t allow those managing our country (APC) to continue because if we allow the APC government to continue, the country will fail as the country is already failing. God sees how people are suffering in this country and will not allow them to manage Nigeria again.

“The 2023 general election is for the continuous existence of Nigeria. If the country must not fail, then we need to vote out APC as a party. Our party, the PDP is organic and our candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is the best among all. The party has the structure to win the election next year,” Governor Obaseki stated.

On her part, the chairperson of the women campaign council, Betsy Obaseki, said: “APC is still imposing more suffering on the people of the nation. The existence of the nation is threatened and Nigerians should not sit down and watch but come out en masse to vote out APC.”

The Star