One Governor Withdrew N500m In New Naira – El-rufai

The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-rufai, has said that a governor collected N500m in the new naira notes.

El-rufai, who has been against the few weeks pegged by the Central Bank of Nigeria for the exchange of old notes for the redesigned ones, said governors whom the policy was expected to affect have their way.

The governor said this in a BBC Hausa interview just days after he alleged that some forces in Aso Rock were behind the policy to frustrate the ambition of the ruling All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

He said, “It is not wrong to change currencies, every country do but you can not change it at this season of elections and give this limited time, where in this world that ever happened?”

“Politicians and big businessmen who are targeted by the policy have their ways of accessing the new notes, some of them own the banks, but what of poor, petty traders?

“All APC governors met on the issue, we saw how people suffer, we support the change of currency but time should be extended to months.

“We said let CBN, banks managers and we governors sat and discussed the issue, let’s work together and have a proper plan on how to go about it, we should have plans to follow people to their homes, villages and change the notes for them but not forcing them to go to banks which take some of them a hundreds kilometers.

“I tell you this change does not affect politicians, they have their money and they are prepared, they know how to access the new notes, it is poor don’t have ways, even yesterday we were told one of the governors was given 500 millions of the new notes.”