Femi Falana, a well-known human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, noted that the CBN governor had not implemented enough strategies to guarantee the policy’s success.
Falana in a message said, “Instead of preparing for the printing of new naira notes and distribution to the banks, Emefiele travelled out of the country. While he was away, the State Security Service declared him wanted for terrorism financing.
‘’In the absence of Emefiele, the members of the Board of the Central Bank of Nigeria had no information on the quantity of the new currency notes that had been printed.
“However, Emefiele returned to the country after a month and was alleged to have been shielded from arrest by some senior military officers. Emefiele, who claimed that he was on his annual vacation, has been battling to make the new currency notes available to members of the public.
The lawyer also accused the President of failing to learn from the naira policy he initiated in 1984.
Falana claims that Buhari, the country’s then-military head of state, destroyed the economy by changing the color of the naira and caused tremendous hardship.
“In 1984, the Buhari military junta changed the colour of the naira. In a country of 81 million people, bank customers and other citizens were given only two weeks to deposit old notes and replace them with new ones.
“The poor implementation of the policy caused untold hardships including loss of lives in many parts of the country,’’ he added.’’
Falana referred to the National Assembly’s inability to rein in the central bank’s excesses as ridiculous, noting that the Central Bank had disregarded all of the Assembly’s decisions and had been spending trillions of naira without authorization.