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… Accuses APC of instigating violence
From Paul Osuyi, Asaba
The People’s Democratic Party PDP Presidential Campaign Council has thrown it’s weight the directive by President Muhammadu Buhari for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to re-circulate the N200 notes into the economy.
This is even as the opposition party accused the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) of taking undue advantage of the suffering associated with prevailing scarcity of redesigned currency notes to incite the public with a view to truncating the ongoing election process.
Spokesman of the campaign council, Charles Aniagwu made this known in Asaba while addressing a press conference on development in the polity.
Aniagwu who doubles as Delta State Commissioner for Information, said the decision of Buhari to order the re-circulation of N200 notes was in line the president’s commitment to ensure free, fair and credible election.
Flanked by the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, Olisa Ifeajika, Aniagwu said the decision of Buhari would ease the pains Nigerians are going through at the moment.
“We must agree with the President that we appreciate the things that Nigerians are going through on account of the scarcity of the new naira note redesign.
“We believe that it is important that the CBN takes steps to further ameliorate what the masses are going through. And what the President did, is a pointer that government is desirous of solving the challenges being experienced by very credible Nigerians as they approach the banks for their monies.
“The decision of the President that authorises the release of the old N200 notes into the economy in order to reduce the sufferings of people, is a welcome development.
“We also agree that it is important to take steps to curb corruption, issues of vote buying and that of insecurity, which has been a major problem. So this policy to a large extent, has addressed that.
“We do hope that the sufferings Nigerians are going through will be mitigated by this directive that Mr. President has given the CBN to release the old N200 naira notes up till the 10th of April,” he said.
He alleged that the PDP through intelligence gathering, uncovered plots by members of the APC both in the state and at the national level, of “trying to take advantage of the pains in the minds of Nigerians to trigger some form of crisis with a view to derailing this election.
“What you saw happening in a number of places does not show the real pains in the minds of Nigerians who have demonstrated understanding with the government’s policy.
“You have seen what happened in Warri and Udu areas of Delta. Some are burning billboards and shops. The question is, do we keep the redesigned naira notes on billboards or in those local shops?
“So it is not proper for us to inflict pains on our fellow Nigerians. Therefore, it tells you that this protest is coming from somewhere with a view to creating crisis.
“Secondly, our brothers and sisters work in these bank branches and earn monies from the banks. So even if you burn down this banks, you are also causing pains for these our brothers who are going to lose their jobs on the account that the bank branch where they work is destroyed or closed.
“So we are pleading to Nigerians to please not to fall prey to the antics of those who know that they would lose this election and want to cause mayhem so that they undermine the election.
“We appreciate the pains and hope that the CBN would take immediate steps as directed by the President in order to reduce the suffering of our people at the ATMs.
“Those who might have stock piled money would have done so in the N500 and N1000 denominations. We can assure you that the steps they are taking to trigger violence is not because they are fighting for us but because they want to do those things to undermine the peace that we have in Delta and across the federation.
“Since this policy came in, we have it from intelligence agencies that the spate of kidnapping for ransom has stopped because if you kidnap anybody and asked the person to get huge sums of money for ransom, where is the person going to get it from?
“It is also on record that it does appear that the naira is stabilising; for those who have transactions with the dollar. So what needs to be done is to fine tune the policy and not to kill it.
“What the APC is trying to do is to kill the policy so they can afford to bring back these stashed funds that they want to deploy to undermine this election,” Aniagwu stated.
