Former Lagos state governor who is a current Minister of Works and Housing under president Buhari’s government, Babatunde Fashola, has told the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to review its naira swap policy if it’s no longer working to achieve its aims.
Fashola, who appeared on Channels TeleviSion made the appeal to reverse the policy over its negative impact on Nigerians.
The CBN has fixed February 10 as the new deadline for the swap of old naira notes, having initially fixed January 31 as the deadline.
Many Nigerians are currently unable to obtain the new N200, N500, and N1,000 notes, resulting in scarcity and attendant suffering in the country.
The minister bemoaned the hardship caused by the apex bank’s directive, saying it was critical that public officials review their policies when they had the opposite effect than desired.
He said, “I empathise with those challenges but some of them are the result of the policy and it is the responsibility of public servants, especially those responsible for those policies to look back and say, ‘Did we intend to cause this pain?’
“And if the policy is not working, perhaps you have to readjust and to also ask yourself whether you thought this through. As a public officer, before and now, I have had cause to reverse myself, when I saw that my policies were causing unintended results.”
“So, I have no responsibility on those two areas and therefore I cannot speak to the details of the facts that are available to the policymakers but the important thing is that those policies are not yet delivering the results and are delivering a lot of inconvenience for [people],” he added.
