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•Southern Nigeria youths tackle CBN governor
From Magnus Eze, Enugu
Some traders in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have expressed delight over improvement in the availability of naira notes to citizens.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that many markets in Abuja, on Monday, returned to normal daily business activities as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) injected more naira notes to the commercial banks.
A meat seller, Alhaji Audu Ali, said since the naira scarcity started, business had not been good, adding that most days he had no meat to sell due to the development.
“We use cash to buy the cows from the sellers because most of them don’t believe in cash transfers or have no bank accounts.
“Many people coming to buy from us always do transfers and this makes it difficult for us to buy from the sellers who usually demand for cash before they sell to us,” Ali said.
He, however, said that since Saturday, patronage with cash had gotten better, adding that it had become easier for everyone to do his/her transaction with cash.
Mrs Ella Aminu, a civil servant, expressed happiness, as many people now had easy access to cash to do their respective businesses.
According to him, it is now easy for him to get cash from his bank to buy food items, unlike before.
“Lots of citizens had suffered during the period of cash scarcity, as many vendors preferred to do their businesses in cash.
“Again, Point of Sale (POS) operators in the market always charge interest per vendor. How much are the salaries of these buyers who are majorly civil servants?” he queried.
Aminu said that in view of the situation, many of the POS operators took advantage of the naira scarcity to make outrageous profits from their customers.
She, however, commended the Federal Government for obeying the Supreme Court judgment extending the use of old naira notes as a legal tender till December 31.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Council of Southern Nigeria Youths (SCOSNY) has taken a swipe at the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele over the ugly and negative effects of the recently introduced cashless policy by the apex bank.
It also flayed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its poor conduct of the 2023 general elections.
These formed part of the resolutions taken by the group at its National Conference in Enugu where delegates reviewed the state of the nation.
The youths described the cashless policy as inhuman noting that it has inflicted series of untold hardship on Nigerians and led to premature death in several instances.
It called on Emefiele to reverse the cashless policy in national interest and resign as the apex bank governor.
In a communique by its National President, Arthur Obiora and National Secretary, Evangelist Samuel Brown, SCOSNY said: “The Central Bank Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele should reverse and regret his inhumane cashless policy, apologise to Nigerians and resign with immediate effect for his hardness of heart, ineptitude professional quackery and administrative incapacity which has come to bear through his obnoxious financial policy which has pushed Nigerians into quagmire and untold hardship, suffering, hunger, misery, business frustration and premature death to innocent Nigerians.”
The group appealed to the judiciary to live up to expectations as it dispensed justice in the election petitions.
It cautioned the judiciary to prove to Nigerians ‘its integrity, justice and credibility in defending the truth and giving rights to the owners in the just concluded 2023 elections.”
SCOSNY expressed gratitude to President Muhammadu Buhari for ensuring power shift to Southern Nigeria and urged the president-elect to leave no stone unturned in his bid to restore the nation’s lost glory.
Among other decisions reached in the conference, SOSNY called for proper restructuring of the nation’s socio-economy to enable Southern Nigeria have a fair share of the benefit, in as much as most of the resources were harvested from the zone.
It further called for the decentralisation of the Nigeria Police, as a measure of checkmating high rate of insecurity and corruption in the country.
