By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
The controversial naira redesign coverage launched on the winding up of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration by the Central Financial institution of Nigeria, CBN, was the brainchild of the Financial and Monetary Crimes Fee, it has been revealed.
A e book that chronicled the biography of former President Buhari’s administration titled: “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari,” authored by Dr. Charles Omole and introduced on the Banquet Corridor of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, disclosed that the proposal to revamp the naira didn’t originate from the CBN beneath its former governor, Godwin Emefiele, as extensively believed.
In keeping with the e book, the cardinal goal of the naira redesign coverage was starvie vote consumers of money forward of the 2023 common election.
The e book said that the coverage, launched in October 2022, precipitated a extreme money crunch that plunged thousands and thousands of Nigerians into hardship, triggering what many described as a humanitarian disaster within the months main as much as the polls.
Whereas formally framed as a reform to advertise a cashless economic system, strengthen financial coverage and curb illicit actions comparable to ransom funds, money hoarding and vote shopping for, its implementation proved deeply disruptive.
Few insurance policies of the Buhari period generated as a lot warmth. With hindsight, critics seen the redesign as a political torpedo geared toward undermining the governing get together’s electoral prospects.
In keeping with the e book, lengthy earlier than the redesign itself, Buhari had authorized a proposal from financial authorities to improve home forex manufacturing, ending reliance on overseas printers and constructing nationwide capability.
He funded the mandatory upgrades and insisted on native functionality. It was alongside this trajectory, the e book notes, that the redesign proposal emerged, now packaged with the ambition of sanitising money flows and undercutting cash politics.
Buhari’s long-standing aversion to money-driven politics aligned with the pitch. By the point it turned obvious, not less than to some inside the safety institution, that the political and operational prices had been spiralling, the method had gathered irreversible momentum. Foreign money samples had been printed and timelines fastened.
Because the e book suggests, not each coverage might be elegantly withdrawn as soon as the equipment is in movement.
The biography explicitly names then EFCC chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, because the originator of the redesign proposal.
The Director-Normal of the Division of State Companies, DSS, Yusuf Magaji Bichi, is quoted as saying the EFCC boss proposed the coverage “with the specific aim of ravenous voter-buyers.”
“Buhari’s intuition aligned,” Bichi recounts. “He had fought cash politics for many years and was interested in an thought which may, even painfully, clear up the sphere. Buhari was certain Asiwaju would win, so he was not involved about cleansing up the method and levelling the sphere.”
Amid intense political accusations that the coverage was designed to break the ruling get together, Bichi stated Buhari ordered that investigative studies be despatched on to him, cautious of sabotage or misrepresentation. But the President’s posture remained constant: keep away from interference in regulation enforcement, insist on transparency, and permit occasions to unfold with out weaponising the state towards opponents or shielding allies.
Past coverage, the e book additionally gives a uncommon, intimate portrait of Buhari by means of the lens of his former Chief Safety Officer (CSO), Abubakar Idris. Idris’ account is much less about partisan battles than concerning the self-discipline, restraint and institutional habits of a commander-in-chief.
He described a President who delegated freely, demanded outcomes with out micromanagement, and shunned gossip. We encounter the human Buhari too: a pacesetter who refused the general public arrest of a relative, insisted on stopping at crimson lights even in convoy, and believed that dignity itself was a type of nationwide safety.
Delegation, Idris explains, outlined Buhari’s presidency. “Belief was the crimson line. As soon as the President trusted you, he gave you area to carry out, however that area got here with accountability.”
Excuses, he provides, had solely fleeting validity.
Entry to the President was tightly regulated. Appointments mattered. Gatekeeping was skilled, even when it unsettled the highly effective. Idris recollects stopping a newly appointed Chief of Workers on the Villa gate for missing an appointment, and standing his floor.
Buhari by no means overruled such choices, even when influential figures bristled. In a political tradition the place proximity usually masquerades as privilege, that consistency, Idris argues, strengthened institutional dignity.
The e book additionally challenges persistent rumours of a shadowy cabal isolating Buhari from actuality. Idris insists the President was properly knowledgeable by means of structured methods, not whispers.
Every day govt summaries, protecting nationwide safety, energy technology, gas provide and political developments, had been delivered seven days per week.
Buhari learn them, requested questions and issued directives the place crucial.
“He knew,” Idris concludes, providing a counternarrative to one of the crucial enduring myths of the Buhari years.
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