The Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara State governments have filed a lawsuit against the Federal Government before the Supreme Court, seeking a restraining order to halt the full implementation of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s naira redesign policy. The lawsuit follows the chaos and hardship that Nigerians go through in efforts to meet the deadline for the new naira exchange In a motion ex-parte filed on their behalf by their lawyer, AbdulHakeem Uthman Mustapha (SAN), the Northern States urged the Supreme Court to give them an interim injunction stopping the Nigerian Government either by itself or acting through the CBN, commercial banks or its agents from executing its plan of ending the timeframe within which the now older currencies of 200, 500 and 1000 denomination will cease to be legal tenders.
The Plaintiffs in the suit are the three Attorneys-Generals and Commissioners of Justice of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara while the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is the sole respondent.
The Plaintiffs claimed that since the announcement of the new naira note policy, there has been a serious shortage in the supply of the new naira notes in the three states and that citizens who have dutifully deposited their old naira notes have increasingly found it hard and sometimes impossible to access new naira notes to go about their daily activities.
They also insisted that the 10-day extension by the Federal Government is still not sufficient to address the challenges bedeviling the policy.
However, no date has been fixed for the hearing of the suit Recall that the CBN had announced an extension of its previous deadline for a full transition to new naira notes.
The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, announced the extension of the date by ten days in a press statement issued last week.
The new deadline, according to Emefiele, is now February 10, 2023.