The vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Datti Baba-Ahmed, has said comments made by the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, on the naira redesign policy following the nationwide broadcast of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd., are treasonable.
El-Rufai in a state broadcast on Thursday faulted the President on his directive to re-introduce just the old N200 banknote as part of measures to curb the cash crunch in the country.
El-Rufai, who said the old N1,000 and N500 are still legal tenders in his state, stated that the aim of the naira redesign is to scuttle the general elections in order to allow an interim government led by a retired army general
However, speaking during a press conference in Abuja on Friday, the LP vice presidential candidate said the governor’s comment, amounts to treason and wondered why the presidency is silent.
He argued that there is only one authority in Nigeria which is the president and wondered how a governor could counter the directive of the president.
“Anybody who commits this kind of indiscipline under our leadership the full weight of the law should bear on him. We have been more than bewildered at the failures we have witnessed in the past few days. However, it is more of an act of treason, so to say it is an act of treason. If an elected governor of a constituent part of a sovereign country will give direct instructions to the contrary of what is the exclusive preserve of the federal government.
“Why as a Commender-in-chief you give a clean executive constitutional order and a state governor goes out to say that you should continue to exchange those currencies? This is to say that there are two authorities in a country,” Baba-Ahmed said.
