The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El‑Rufai, alleged on Thursday night that the scarcity of naira notes is part of a plot to disrupt the forthcoming elections and pave the way for an interim government. In a state broadcast, El‑Rufai claimed the current cash shortage is linked to efforts aimed at ensuring the defeat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu. He said the policy was devised and presented to the President by officials who had lost in the APC gubernatorial and presidential primaries of June 2022.
According to El‑Rufai, once Asiwaju Bola Tinubu emerged as the APC candidate in June 2022 and did not select any of those officials as his running mate, the currency redesign policy was created to deprive the candidate of a “humongous war chest.” He asserted that the policy had several objectives: to create a nationwide cash shortage that would encourage citizens to vote against APC candidates, to cause massive losses for the party in all elections, and to make the cash crunch—combined with the ongoing fuel shortage since September 2022—so severe that the 2023 elections would be postponed, leading to an interim national government headed by a retired army general.
The governor also criticized President Muhammadu Buhari’s order setting a deadline for old notes, calling it a violation of a Supreme Court ruling. El‑Rufai urged Kaduna residents to continue using the old naira notes, despite Buhari’s earlier national broadcast stating that the N1,000 and N500 old notes were no longer legal tender. He appealed to the people to stand firmly for democracy, peace, and national unity.
El‑Rufai highlighted that the federal government and its agencies ignored the February 8 Supreme Court ruling by insisting the February 10 deadline remained in effect. He described the President’s recent announcement limiting the legal tender status of old notes to amounts of N200 as a blatant disregard for the court’s order, which had been extended by the Supreme Court the previous day. The governor condemned the Attorney‑General’s role in misleading the President, calling it a desperate attempt by the policy’s architects to sow national chaos and show contempt for the judiciary.
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