On Friday, the Supreme Court finally laid to rest the controversy surrounding the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) naira swap policy. It took three sittings of the apex court, two attempts by the federal government to tweak the deadlines beyond which the notes would cease to be legal tender, and massive political and socio-economic disruptions to bring the suit initially brought by Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara States to an embarrassing close.
The CBN had unveiled the new naira notes in October, ordered Nigerians to swap their old notes with the new ones beginning from mid-December, and had set a January 31 terminal date for the notes to remain legal tender
The deadline was suffocating and immensely disruptive, but after one extension terminating on February 10, the administration put its foot down and refused to budge, except for President Muhammadu Buhari’s February 16 concession to allow the N200 notes remain in circulation following the apex court interim order keeping the notes in circulation until the end of the suit.
Well, all is well that ends well. The apex court has finally ruled that the notes will remain in circulation until December 31, a great relief for bank customers who had been unlawfully denied access to their money. That new date should give the CBN, no matter how malicious it is, enough time to withdraw the old notes and replace them with redesigned notes.
It was thought that when the court sat on February 22 it would give a definitive order on the naira policy consequent upon the Buhari administration’s refusal to obey the interim order to keep the old notes in circulation.
Instead, the court adjourned till after the presidential poll, a move many thought showed a reluctance to take on the administration or an indication that the court connived at a policy suspected at the time to be largely political.
The apex court, analysts also expected, should have guarded its reputation and powers more jealously by hammering the administration’s impudence in retaining only the old N200.
By describing the Buhari administration as dictatorial and autocratic, and the naira redesign policy as unlawful and maliciously executed, the Supreme Court finally left no one in doubt how strongly it viewed the government’s malfeasance.
The judgement not only restored the court’s integrity and dignity, it also reestablished its powers, especially going by the logic of the judgement and the harshness of its denunciation of the administration’s disobedience.
The poorly executed naira swap policy should have led to the resignation of the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, and the Justice minister and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami. But two interim orders later and the pains the policy inflicted on the country have proved insufficient to push the two officers out.
With the apex court judgement, not to say its harsh excoriation of the administration’s abuse of power, it is incredible that both Messrs Emefiele and Malami are still sitting pretty in office.
Few Nigerians, however, expect both the CBN governor and the Justice minister to resign or be fired. This is because the naira swap policy is widely believed to have been designed to undermine the campaigns of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate. But by early February, it seemed the plot to undermine the party and whittle down its chances in the impending poll was not succeeding.
This was because the APC and its presidential candidate sensibly distanced themselves from the naira swap policy, sided with the suffering masses, and rallied against the poor execution of the swap. By February 25, it was clear that the plot against the party and its candidate had virtually failed. The party went on to win the presidential poll by about 1.8m votes, and so far had also secured more than 50 Senate seats.
Its commanding lead was unassailable. If despite the punishingly tight deadline given for the naira swap policy the APC still won, and won handsomely, administration officials must wonder what came over them.
APC governors, many of whom joined the suit, have strenuously attempted to distance the president from the ill-fated policy. They are unlikely to succeed. Nigerians see the entire administration as culpable.
President Buhari has less than three months in office; it is worrisome that he got himself embroiled in a messy and doomed policy. No one thought of impeaching him for disobeying court order, and no one could haul him in for contempt; but his administration will be stigmatised with a nonsensical naira policy and flagrant disobedience to court orders.
For an administration that has chalked up a fair amount of great infrastructural interventions, conceiving and executing the naira swap policy and disobedience to courts are not the kind of legacies to flaunt as it winds down.
Obasanjo, youths and presidential poll
EX-PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo manifested his idiosyncratic bitterness once again when he inspired a three-pronged response to the February 25 presidential poll.
First, years after indicating that he had retired from active politics, he publicly and actively endorsed Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) for the presidency. He gave indication that he was dissatisfied with the other two leading aspirants, Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Mr Obi had no inspiring track record, and had no coherent and plausible answers to Nigeria’s existential crisis, but was determined to harness divisive religious votes. Nevertheless, Chief Obasanjo embraced his aspiration. It was clear he loathed the other aspirants and would do everything to undermine them.
Second, he incited Nigerian youths against their elders, urging them to take over the country because they constitute the largest voting bloc. He gave no sensible or practicable roadmap, except to suggest that the youths could furnish their own revolution within the ambit of Mr Obi’s naïve and utopian aspiration.
And when it looked like the presidential election votes were going the way of the APC, Chief Obasanjo cried foul and called for partial disruption of the electoral process. Again, he did not indicate how constitutionally feasible that would be, or what facts were available to him to make him suggest such drastic and catastrophic remedies.
Both the PDP and LP, knowing they were losing or had lost, embraced the former president’s scheme and began to campaign for vote cancellation. In the end, no one listened to them, not least the electoral umpire, INEC.
And third, after failing to truncate the election, Chief Obasanjo was reported as advocating for mass action to undermine the May 29 inauguration.
He is inciting youths and any other aggrieved group to join hands to disrupt the march towards May 29. Again, he does not indicate how that would not fit in to his appalling interim government gambit, just like he and others had embraced in 1993 to the country’s dismay and anguish.
As a former president, especially one who had superintended and defended perhaps the worst election in Nigerian history, he has not shown by logic or evidence how he and others hope to manage the new and complicated but unconstitutional process.
Clearly, his unsolicited intervention is not because he loves Mr Obi or because he thinks him fit to occupy the highest office in the land winning essentially Igbo and Christian votes.
It is also not because he loves Nigeria so much, as indeed his own leadership records have shown. It is simply because he cannot contemplate being sidelined or submitting himself to the rule of any elected president who does not owe him an obligation
He should be watched closely, for he would not mind bringing the whole democratic edifice down.
