Former Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and currently the President of ‘Nigeria My Country’, a Diaspora organization, Dr Ifeanyi Chukwuka, has thrown his weight behind the naira redesign policy of the President Muhammadu Buhari government.
Dr Chukwuka, who spoke from Dallas, USA, rather pleaded with the government to make the new naira notes available to the suffering masses, noting that some of the people demonstrating and destroying Nigerian banks do not even have bank accounts.
He suggested that the Federal Government should make it easy for every Nigerian to collect N50,000 every two weeks, adding that whoever needs anything more than this should make use of Internet bank transfers.
He noted that the N50,000 cash withdrawal every two weeks is more than enough for all Nigerians of whatever social strata to buy milk, bread, water, make soup, and other essential commodities needed from the market women without going through the troubles of POS.
He said that anybody that wants bulk purchase from N2,000 and above should use the POS option or transfer.
He urged the Federal Government to make it mandatory for all businesses that operate from an office where bulk purchases are likely to be made to get the POS.
Dr Chukwuka urged President Buhari not to yield to corrupt politicians who are trying to sabotage this clear good intension of his regime.
The US-based doctor wondered why a Speaker of the House of Assembly would without shame and with effrontery state in the media that he needed N70 million cash to do election.
“This is a terrible and overt confession of high level of corruption. The politicians and governors going to the Supreme Court to challenge this case should know that Nigerians know their motives.
“They have stacked billions of Naira in their various Government Houses with which to buy votes during the elections,” he said, urging Nigerians to ignore the ranting of some of these governors, saying that “they are being drowned by this President Buhari’s new naira policy.”
Dr Chukwuka, therefore, called on the Federal Government not to extend any more the deadline for the old naira notes as legal tender, saying that every Nigerian had enough time from December 12, 2022 to January 31, 2023 to deposit their old notes.
“This is a case of indiscipline on those who still have old naira notes,” he noted, adding that as DG, NOA he wanted indiscipline among other diseases of impatience, intolerance, insincerity and injustice eradicated from the society.
He, however, regretted that his time in NOA was not enough to enable him eradicate these diseases of Nigerians.
He assured that wherever he is, he would continue to project this nation as a wonderful country.
“Nigeria is an awesome country full of intellectuals. I remember when I spoke in 2021, in Kuru, Jaji, Jos in a seminar organized by the Federal Government to resolve the trouble between the Tivs and the Jukuns, in the presence of President Olusegun Obasanjo, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Prof Jerry Gana and many others, and President Obasanjo added his own disease of Nigeria as indolence and asked me to join that in the crusade I was embarking in NOA.
“Today, Nigerian leaders have confused the people of Nigeria. There is confusion in all sectors, be it petroleum, banking, commerce and industry, etc. There is this terrible idea of abandoning the common man to the survival of the fittest policy of the government,” he said.
He wondered why simple things like giving the teeming youths of the nation jobs is so difficult to figure out, saying that while he was the DG of NOA, he gave thousands of Nigerians jobs in all states of the federation.
“That is what government is for to cater for the poor masses,” he said, adding that what he did in NOA could be copied as a model by the federal, state and local governments to give the youths of Nigeria employment.
“Everyday, in all ministries, departments, parastatals, etc in the federal, state and local governments, extant workers die, resign, retire, or even quit or travel overseas. Who is taking their positions,” Dr Chukwuka queried.
He wondered where their salaries go to, saying that it is, of course, “into the pockets of corrupt officials of the government at all these levels.
“Thus, I urge the government of Nigeria at all levels to compile all these open vacancies in the Federal, states and local governments like I did in NOA and fill them up with human beings and kill this corruptive abyss and ghost workers syndrome.
“President Buhari should know that this cashless policy of his government will stem the following problems of this nation: kidnapping will be reduced as nobody has that kind of millions again to move around. And if kidnappers try POS or bank transfer, they will be caught. Also the cashless policy will help curb inflation in the country which I observed in 2010 that Nigeria would not survive if she does not curb the inflation beginning then. I complained when people pay N20,000 without qualms in a restaurant in Nigeria for just a lunch of two. I observed that the amount of naira in circulation was too much. This cashless policy will reduce it to the barest minimum.”
On who becomes the next president of Nigeria following the election yesterday, Dr Chukwuka stated that as a matter of policy, he cannot comment on Nigerian politics because he is not in Nigeria for now.
However, he said that if one wants to change a system, that one must be within the system and that one cannot change a system from the outside no matter how vocal one is, saying that if one wants to sweep or clean a room, one must be within the room as one cannot sweep a room from the outside.
He, therefore, urged Nigerians to vote for a candidate of their choice.
Dr Chukwuka noted that politics is not a game of ethnicity or bona-fide right of one person, saying rather that politics is a game of number, wit, alignment, scheming and counter-scheming.
“No one person, Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa will claim it is their turn. It is an open field for everybody and only those who know how to play it succeed,” he said.
Source: The Sun
