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Today we are going to just skirt around a kaleidoscope of issues, a kind of look at the major trending issues of the past one week. The most current of these is the extension granted by the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, for the submission of the old Naira notes to the banks and the coming into effect of the new Naira notes. Emefiele’s volte face, after he and the president had sworn that “no Jupiter” would make them consider an extension to the January 31st date, we are told, emanated from the President, Muhammadu Buhari, who under pressure from top politicians and some eminent Nigerians had to cave in.
And it is a reasonable thing to do. Given that the process has seemingly been hijacked by the ubiquitous Nigerian factor, and our penchant for “last minute dot.com” it was almost like a fait accompli for the governing authorities to do the needful and extend the deadline.
The major saboteurs of the current Naira redesign deadline appear to be the banks. Despite the claim by the CBN that they are well funded with the redesigned notes, they choose to complicate the process. They blatantly disobeyed the CBN who had asked that they stop stocking ATMs with the old notes. Rather they chose to make it a hellish experience for Nigerians who still have the old notes with them. The queues at the ATMs and banks were frighteningly long and skirmishes were beginning to entice frustrated Nigerians who wanted to beat the deadline. Then the extension announcement came. According to the CBN Governor, Emefiele, instead of the earlier January 31st deadline, ten days grace of February 10th, was the new date.
The question cannot but be asked: why do we like complicating simple issues? Why can’t we get the simplest of things right? How much does the average Nigerian have stored at home or in some hidden locale that they can’t get the old notes exchanged for new within 100 days? As usual, the real culprit of the new policy are using the back door, sabotaging the system, and laughing all the way at the stupidity of policy makers and Nigerians. For them, there is always a solution, no matter how devious it is, to countermand any policy designed to checkmate their criminal excesses. They do know how to beat the system. This they have shown again and again. By the time the CBN finds time to do an audit of how much was returned to the banks as old notes, it will be clear that the smart Alecs, have once again rubbed excreta on all our faces.
For me, I smell a huge racketeering rat; a syndicated compromise geared towards making illicit cash available to politicians through the back door to corrupt the looming elections. As we all know, most of the politicians, through corrupt practices, have amassed huge Naira war chests intended to fight the presidential, national and state elections. It is now plausible that they are in cahoots with the banks, some of whom they own, to make of no effect, the withdrawal of the old Naira notes.
Another reason why the bank managing directors should be thoroughly investigated is the fact that while they claim their banks did not receive enough new notes from the Central Bank, syndicates across major cities in Nigeria have a surfeit of the new notes, which they undoubtedly got from the banks, in total disregard of the new withdrawal limits set by the authorities. This they now get their foot soldiers to sell in street corners while other big men who have also breached the system, with the active connivance of the bank MDs, spray in bundles at parties.
As exclusively reported by TheNewsGuru.com, TNG, on Monday this week, even POS operators are forced to buy the new notes from the bank syndicates hence anyone who wants to collect the new notes from them must forfeit a punishing 10 percent of whatever amount they want to withdraw. So for an example, if you want to withdraw N20,000 you will only get N18000, with N2000 as cost.
There is no other plausible explanation as to why the banks have baulked the orders, deliberately frustrated Nigerians who have over the last 100 days tried to exchange their old notes for new ones, only to get the same notes paid to them at the ATMs and even at the banks’ counters. As we all know, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC has left no one in doubt that the policy was specifically targeted at him. He has not fully disclosed his reasons for this assertion but the federal government fell just short of saying it is a policy targeting the politicians who hope to buy their way through the elections. It euphemistically told the nation last week that it was Nigerian “big men” who are the targets. Nocturnal visits to Aso Rock by the candidates of the APC, PDP and others are said to be the last straw that truncated January 31st as the final deadline to return the old notes.
….SCARY NEWS FROM OSUN ELECTION TRIBUNAL
The long awaited Osun Governorship Election Tribunal finally came out with a verdict which annulled the election of Senator Adeleke as Governor of Osun State. Sincerely, however, that is not the main news of the verdict. The devastating news, however, is the huge blow to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, who have before now assured us that the BVAS system which it has introduced as the long awaited solution to election rigging and over voting in Nigeria. The Tribunal results show that BVAS can be compromised and over voting can still be perpetrated. In 700 units, in the Ede and other electoral strongholds of the Adelekes, it was successfully shown that announced votes did not tally with BVAS. Unfortunately, if a proper forensic audit is done across the state, we may just find out that BVAS is still a long way from our free and fair elections dream. INEC releasing two different sets of BVAS results for the election adds more scarce fuel to the electoral manipulation confusion. This holds dire consequences for the Presidential and other elections afoot.
…..AND DSS HAS NOT ARRESTED THE ISLAMIC CLERIC
Karl Marx, the renowned political theorist and socialist revolutionary, once noted that religion is the opium of the masses . And nowhere, globally, is this more true than in poverty ravaged Africa; especially so in Nigeria. As over 103 million Nigerians stew in the strangulating poverty brought on them by the incompetent Buhari government currently grinding, mercifully, to an end, and there emerges the possibilities of resetting the button of governance, a little known Islamic cleric, in Kano, was trending all week where he was seen urging Moslem faithful not to consider voting for “infidels” meaning Peter Obi and other Christian politicians. Owning up to the attack on the Labour Party Presidential Candidate last week in Kano, he was full of venom and peddled so much hate speech it is a good thing all the major security apparatus are headed by Moslems appointed by the Moslem President Buhari. If they are not conniving and are in agreement with him, it is a miracle he is still walking about vomiting his hatred against those he considers as infidels?