El-Rufai Clarifies Stance On Naira Redesign, Criticizes Buhari’s Decision

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna, says President Muhammadu Buhari made a mistake concerning the naira redesign policy.

Speaking in an interview with the BBC Hausa, el-Rufai said the policy was introduced to make the All Progressives Congress (APC) lose in the election. He said governors were against the policy because of the hardship it has put people into and not because of vote buying.

“We reviewed this policy and the hardship it put people into and the feeling of hatred Nigerians developed for the APC because Nigerians are putting the blame on the APC and the people who introduced the policy did it to make our party lose in the election,” el-Rufai said.

“After we finished our review, we agreed that the judgement of the supreme court should be followed which is the old and new notes should be used until the case is over.

“Did vote-buying start today? Why was the money not redesigned before? Why now? Secondly, is vote-buying only done with naira? It can be bought using dollars, euros, sefa, you can give the voters food.

“There are several ways through which you can buy votes. You cannot take money out of politics, but you can reduce it. We are not against this policy because of vote buying. I swear to God we are against it because of how we saw people suffering, not the elections.

“The people who pushed for the naira redesign are not members of the APC. You see Godwin Emefiele, it was the PDP that brought him. The others with who the decision was taken with them we know them and when the time comes, will expose them because they are not members of our party.

“God willing on Saturday the masses will retaliate against those who want to drag our party to the ground who the APC gave an opportunity to get money more than what will be sufficient for them to do the shopping because some of them knew when shopping in their homes was difficult for them eight years ago, but now, they have money more than you could imagine.

I swear to God we will bring them out and ask them where they got their money from. Because a president is a person who believes in people, and we (governors), our image has been tarnished. He has been told that governors are thieves, so we are against the naira redesign policy.

“Even if we go to him and say ‘our leader you have been lied to in this place’, and he says I understand and will take action on it, the moment we depart, he will be told not to take any action. Every person is a nine out of ten. In this regard, we believe the president made a mistake.”