Ondo residents hail Supreme Court judgment, knock CBN, Emefiele

Following the nullification of the naira redesign policy by the Supreme Court, residents of Ondo State have described the judgment as soothing.

According to some of the residents who bared their minds on the development, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Godwin Emefiele, should apologize to Nigerians for the harrowing hardship they went through in the past months.

A lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at Adekunle Ajasin University, Dr. Gbenga Abimbola, said the judgment was in the interest of Nigerians who have been sleeping and waiting endlessly in the banks.

Abimbola said: “That is a brilliant judgment. It is expected by some of us even though some people had thought that the federal government, through the CBN, would have its way.

“The truth is that this policy is a good policy; to change the note is good, and to go cashless is good. But the manner in which the federal government brought it through the policy was suspect.

“Now those of us who had accused the CBN of being political about this policy were now justified because how on earth can you say that because you want to change the naira note and you told us that it will start on December 15th, the new note will be in circulation and co-exist with the old note until January 31, less than two months? It is not done anywhere.

“Even after December 15th, CBN did not pump the new note into circulation. People went to the bank, and they were still given the old note. After the 31st, CBN extended for ten days only. Many Nigerians still have the old notes.

“People have besieged the bank, and neither the old nor the new are available to them. With the Supreme Court judgment, I think the banks will now throw open their vault and begin to allow people to spend.”

Also, a civil servant with the Ondo State Government, Dapo Olawale, stated that there ought to be compensation for the excruciating pains Nigerians were made to go through with the policy, which he described as “killing.”

Olawale also said the policy, which was supposed to have a positive impact on the economy, dealt a fatal blow to the businesses of Nigerians