Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has declared that all old naira notes remain legal tender in the state.
El-Rufai’s declaration came hours after President Muhammadu Buhari had thrown his weight behind the naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Buhari had in a national broadcast on Thursday, declared the old N500 and N1000 notes illegal, while ordering for a recirculation of the N200 note.
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However, in his statewide address on Thursday night, El-Rufai said the old naira notes remain legal tender until Supreme Court of Nigeria decides otherwise.
The Governor said the old and new naira notes will co-exist in the state until the apex court states otherwise.
He said;
“For the avoidance of doubt, all the old and new notes shall remain in use as legal tender in Kaduna State until the Supreme Court of Nigeria decides otherwise.
“I therefore appeal to all residents of Kaduna State to continue to use the old and new notes side by side without any fear. The Kaduna State Government and its agencies shall seal any facility that refuses to accept the old notes as legal tender and prosecute the owners.
“If need be, we shall take further consequential actions according to the law. The address by the President earlier this morning limiting the legal tender status of old notes to only N200 amounts to total disregard and disobedience of the ruling of February 8th which was extended further yesterday by the Supreme Court.
“The misguided action of the Attorney-General to mislead the President into engaging in this public violation of the order of the highest court of the land shows how desperate the policy architects are to cause national chaos, by showing open contempt for the judiciary.
“The decision to recognise only N200 as legal tender till April that the President announced this morning was offered to the state governments as part of proposals for an out-of-court settlement three days ago.
“The Federal Government asserted that this was offered because all the ‘old’ N1,000 and N500 notes had been destroyed. We rejected the offer and proved to the officials that not a single higher denomination note had been destroyed.
“We also believe that circulating N200 only to be inadequate in alleviating the suffering that we see every day. We insisted that all the components of the Supreme Court order should be complied with.”
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