Recently, the Supreme Court on Wednesday suspended the Central Bank of Nigeria’s deadline for exchanging old for new Naira notes (CBN).
It was gathered that the Supreme Court issued an injunction preventing the Federal Government from suspending the acceptance of old Naira notes on Friday, February 10, 2023.
As the states of Kaduna, Zamfara, and Kogi have taken the Federal Government to the Supreme Court over the scarcity of old and new Naira notes as a result of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) naira redesign policy.
Even though the state governments expressed concern about the effects of the CBN’s naira redesign policy on their residents.
But they went ahead to ask the Supreme Court for a restraining order to prevent the government and CBN from implementing the policy.
The states filed an ex-parte motion through their lawyer, AbdulHakeem Uthman Mustapha (SAN), and are urging the Supreme Court to grant them an interim injunction stopping the Federal Government either by itself or acting through the CBN, the commercial banks or its agents from carrying out its plan of ending the timeframe within which the now older versions of the 200, 500 and 1000 denominations of the Naira may no longer be legal tender on February 10, 2023 while the case has been adjourned to Wednesday, February 15, 2023.
They insist that, “Unless this Honourable Court intervenes, the Government and people of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara State will continue to go through a lot of hardship and would ultimately suffer great loss as a result of the insufficient and unreasonable time within which the Federal Government is embarking on the ongoing currency redesign policy,” Mustapha said.
According to the states, there has been a shortage of new naira notes in Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara, and citizens who have dutifully deposited their old naira notes have increasingly found it difficult, if not impossible, to access new naira notes to go about their daily activities.
Been that the CBN policy is causing significant hardship for Nigerians, and that the Federal Government’s ten-day extension is insufficient to address the challenges of Nigerians exchanging old Naira notes for new ones.