The Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, has likened the crisis occasioned by the CBN’s naira redesign policy to the COVID-19 virus and lambasted the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) for supporting the ‘ill-timed and anti-people’ policy.
According to a Tuesday statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Abba Anwar, the governor spoke during the distribution of palliatives to ease the hardship caused by naira notes scarcity.
The event took place at Government House on Monday.
Ganduje, who is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), described the development as unfortunate and inhuman, and lambasted opposition parties for backing it.
“To our surprise opposition parties took the situation to court supporting and protecting CBN in this ill-timed and anti-people policy.
“Governors of Bayelsa and Edo are all PDP states and are in the forefront in this blunder,” he lamented.
The Kano governor deplored the position of the NNPP on his stance on the matter, saying, “So also NNPP came out and said what the governor of Kano state said in rejecting CBN’s Naira swap was wrong, according to them.”
“I wonder what is wrong in speaking the truth that all Nigerians are seriously suffering because of this anti-human and ill-advised phenomenon,” Ganduje said.
“What PDP and NNPP want is for people to continue wallowing in poverty.
“We will not stop blaming CBN for this economic blunder. We love our people. Therefore anything that will disturb their well being must be rejected, till proper channel and good time are put forth,” he said.
Ganduje said the APC candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, promised Nigerians that when elected in the forthcoming election, he would make sure to put a stop to the current hardship caused by the CBN.
Meanwhile, the governor said the state distributed the palliatives to cushion the effect of the hardship caused to deliberately disturb the well-being of Nigerians.
“We didn’t invite this situation, neither did we pray for it. And therefore, we don’t welcome it at all. We gave similar palliatives during COVID-19 days.
“And today our citizens are being faced with COVID-23 caused by the CBN. We earlier thought it was a simple disease, but unfortunately it turned out to be a very serious virus going viral.
“The virus coming from the CBN affected all our commercial banks, our POS, our ATM machines and all other things associated to this.
“Being the most populous state in the country, we are most affected by this unfortunate development,” Ganduje said.
Beneficiaries of the palliatives cut across the 44 local governments areas of the state.