Supreme Court’s Order On Cash Redesign Deadline Will Douse Tension, Stop Social Unrest– Yusuf

The Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprises, Muda Yusuf has backed the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the Central Bank of Nigeria’s withdrawal of old notes.

It has been argued that when the Central Bank of Nigeria fixed the deadline for the withdrawal of the N1,000, N500 and N200 notes it did not foresee the resistance that the policy would meet due to political interest and resultant hardship.

The CBN’s 60 days deadline ends February 10, 2023, but the Supreme Court gave an interim injunction extending the date till February 15 pending when it will hear from the parties in the suit.

Initially, the apex bank had set January 31, 2023 as the deadline until the February 10 extension and a seven-day grace period.

There are expert arguments that any contrary decision taken by the apex court may erode the independence of the CBN.

But the CPPE boss in his argument welcomed the restraining order of the supreme court on the timeline for the currency swap.

According to him, the decision will restore normalcy to economic activities, especially in the distributive trade sector, the informal sector, and rural economy.

The CPPE boss told THE WHISTLER, “It would also douse current social tension and the risk of social unrest in the country.

“We affirm our position that N2.6 trillion currency in circulation is not too much for the Nigerian economy with a GDP of about N250 trillion. Any attempt to arbitrarily cut it will create a crisis.

“It is unacceptable that citizens are denied access to their cash deposited for purposes of cash swap.”

He said the CBN Ways and Means financing of over N22trn is a bigger threat to liquidity management.

“It is regrettable that a purely monetary policy management issue has been profoundly politicized as witnessed in the past few weeks. This had obscured fundamental economic conversations,” he added.