Nigeria’s Minister of State for Labour and Employment and spokesperson for the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), Festus Keyamo, on Friday suggested that President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive on the naira swap policy may have been ill-advised.
Keyamo spoke while appearing live on a Channels Television programme, The 2023 Verdict.
Buhari had in a national broadcast on Thursday morning told Nigerians that the old N500 and N1,000 banknotes have ceased to be legal tenders but asked the Central Bank (CBN) to recirculate the old N200 notes for use until April 10.
The broadcast came a day after the Supreme Court adjourned hearing on a suit filed by the governments of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara against the implementation of the CBN’s naira swap policy, having earlier granted an interim order that put the policy’s implementation on hold.
The president has since come under heavy criticism for the broadcast, which came somewhat like an afterthought following widespread protests in many parts of the country arising from the scarcity of the new N200, N500 and N1,000 banknotes introduced into circulation by the CBN on 15 December and the rejection of the old notes by businesses and banks.
Speaking during the Channels Television programme on Friday, Keyamo said, “My view is that the president acted honestly without intention to slight the Supreme Court. But he may have acted on wrong advice.
“I did not give that advice; it is not my responsibility. I don’t know who gave that advice. I want to say this openly because tomorrow, people will ask me where I stood at this time.”
Channelstv.com reports that Keyamo stated that Buhari’s speech acknowledged that there were certain matters in court and that the president believed he was playing safe by purportedly intervening to quell the growing tension across the country.
“He thought he was playing safe by saying, ‘Before you decide this matter in court, may I just provide some middle ground so that country burning, there are riots everywhere, so let me just try and provide some succour to the people, whilst acknowledging the matters are in court’,” Keyamo said.
“Now, if I were to advise him, I would have advised differently. I did not advise him. It’s not my responsibility; I don’t know who,” he said.
Asked what his counsel to the president would have been, Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said it would be for him to “comply strictly with the terms of the order of the Supreme Court, [which is that] all the old notes should circulate for now side by side with the new notes because that is the order of the Supreme Court”.
By virtue of the constitution, “all authorities in Nigeria must obey the orders of the Supreme Court”, he said, adding that anything to the contrary was “a descent to anarchy”.
He described the judiciary and the Supreme Court as the last bastion of defence for Nigeria’s democracy, saying disobedience to the order of the Supreme Court is an invitation to “revolutionary intervention or other kinds of interventions” in the country’s democracy.
Earlier, Mike Ozekhome, SAN, had faulted Buhari’s stance on the naira swap, saying the president’s national broadcast on the issue was more like a military tyrant’s contemplation.
Ozekhome, in a communiqué he issued following Buhari’s Thursday broadcast, said the president’s position is “a clear violation of and disobedience to the existing order of the apex court which had already maintained the status quo ante bellum of all parties involved in the Naira re-design dispute”.
He said the Supreme Court adjournment, on Wednesday, 15 February, 2023, of the suit originally filed by the Attorneys-General of Kano, Kogi and Zamfara States after the first interim order, was a further elongation of its earlier interim order granted against the CBN and the Federal Government restraining them from carrying out the directives that the old naira notes would cease to be legal tender by 10 February.
“Buhari’s broadcast to the nation therefore literally overruled the Supreme Court of the land, in a way and manner only a military tyrant could ever contemplate,” the Senior Advocate said.
“Buhari’s imperious order was a frontal call to chaos, anarchy and national upheaval. It was a direct assault on the authority of the Supreme Court, the highest court of the land; and also the head of the entire Judiciary, the 3rd arm of government under the doctrine of separation of powers, most ably popularized in 1748 by Baron de Montesque, a great French Philosopher,” he said.
