"We got here because President Muhammadu Buhari has messed up to have allowed this type of fiasco to exist on the eve of an election when you are campaigning to have your party voted for."
The spokesperson of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has described the redesigning of the Naira as the biggest demarketing strategy against the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Mr Ahmed said this Tuesday during an interview on Channels TV.
Stating that Mr Buhari had messed up, the NEF official said the administration has in the past couple of weeks destroyed the informal sector with the Naira scarcity.
He stated that the hardship caused by the policy is demarketing the ruling party in the northern part of the country.
He stated that the worst enemy of the APC could not have picked a better demarketing strategy against the ruling party.
According to him, it appears that President Muhammadu Buhari is not listening to anybody even though he could end the fiasco by allowing the two currencies to operate side by side.
"We got here because President Muhammadu Buhari has messed up to have allowed this type of fiasco to exist on the eve of an election when you are campaigning to have your party voted for.
"This money thing is a major demarketing strategy for the APC. If the worst enemy of the APC had designed strategy for them to lose the election, he could not have picked a better strategy than this fiasco on redesigning of the Naira.
"Their own people are saying it was designed to make Tinubu lose, the governors said this was designed to make him (Tinubu) lose. The candidate himself said the policy was designed to make him lose.
"People are starving - literally, people are starving. There is no money. In four weeks, you have destroyed the informal sector of the economy in one fell swoop because there is no money, there is no cash. Literally, there is a lot of anger, to see a situation where the president either appears unwilling or incapable of reigning in Emefiele by saying, listen, there are options, we can have the two running in the next six month," he said.
Mr Buhari had after a meeting with some governors of the ruling party said he should be given seven days to take action on the scarcity of the bank notes. He has yet to do so, over 10 days after he made the pledge.
Last week, the president convened a meeting of the Council of State, and the council resolved that the central bank should aggressively print and circulate more naira notes.
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Equally, there is a substantive order by the Supreme Court that mandated the federal government to suspend the deadline of 10 February pending the decision on the suit filed by the governors of Kogi, Kaduna and Zamfara State.
However, Mr Emefiele has disregarded the order of the Supreme Court as he announced that the 10 February deadline stands. The court is set to hear the argument of the two sides on 15 February.
Assessing the frontrunners
Speaking on the presidential race, Mr Ahmed said the NEF is still looking at all the major frontrunners and it will make its decision in no time.
He said the forum will make its decision putting the interest of the north ahead of all others. He stated that the north will not be bullied by those calling for power shift to the south.
"Our position has always been consistent, this rotation thing is a PDP gimmick which they never respected. The power belongs to where the voters are and it goes to the candidates that get the most votes. We have votes in the north, and we have candidates.
"We noticed that in some parts of the south, people are harping on 'it must come to the south' but we thought the language of 'it must come" is overrated. You don't win elections with 'it must' language.
"This country needs a leader that can hold it together and unite it. We are looking at the value of the people. We are looking at the calibre of the people. We are not looking at the language. We are not impressed and we are not intimidated. We will not vote for a candidate just because his supporters used certain language. What that does is that it demarkets the candidate. We have gone past that."
