Ex-President Defends Naira Redesign, Says It Yielded Cleaner 2023 Polls

Former President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, January 16, stated that he didn’t sack Godwin Emefiele, the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) when there were speculations about Emefiele’s presidential ambition, emphasizing that Emefiele never discussed it with him.

This revelation and others were made public in a memoir titled “Working with Buhari: Reflections of a Special Adviser, Media and Publicity (2015 – 2023)”, written by former Special Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, and presented in Abuja on Tuesday.

The book also put up the former President’s defense of his administration’s Naira redesign policy, implemented by the then, Emefiele, saying it helped the country achieve a clean general election in 2023.

The former President maintained that those who had a problem with the policy were individuals who had too much money.

Under the book’s 12th chapter, the former President said: “The scarcity of money was not deliberately done to punish Nigerians. Democracy allows people to express their will, and we did not attempt to control them. People understood the implications of their choices, and we did not force them.

“My state, Katsina, showed the beauty of the whole system. In the Presidential poll, APC lost, but they came back to win the governorship. Maybe they took things for granted earlier because it was my state, and they thought they would win easily. People do not like being taken for granted.

“I met Enefiele in office when I came, and unless there was firm evidence against him, it would be unfair and an act of injustice to remove him, acting on hearsay.

“If you punish a man unjustly, it could dog his footsteps throughout life, so if you would punish, you must have evidence and you should know that yourself wouldn’t be there forever. You would leave one day.

“I’m very conscious about the morale of people who serve with me. I also expect whoever succeeds me to be fair to me. I have family, friends, who will feel it. I’m very conscious of fairness.

“When he was linked with campaign for 2023 presidency, I did not ask him, because he told nobody he was getting involved. Otherwise, I would have removed him and told the nation why.

“There is no denying that the naira redesign policy gave us cleaner elections. It was people who had too much money that had problems with it.

“When it was said that the new notes were not available, over N260 million was found with one bank chairman. Did I take on the Supreme Court on the issue? No, I could not have.

“Some APC governors went to court. I refused to judge people by my own standard, I am not materialistic, but it will be too much to expect all Nigerians to be the same way. It is not fair to condemn anybody, but it is up to them and their conscience. I want to continue to conduct myself with clear conscience, so that when I go to bed, I sleep off immediately”, the book read.