By Babalola Seyi
President Muhammadu Buhari, according to Kaduna State Governor Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has permitted persons he (el-Rufai) called “evil people” to use him (Buhari) to attack and demolish the political party that provided him with the platform to serve Nigeria.
According to him, those who are using the president as a weapon against the APC did so because their attempt to impose their own candidate on the party during the June 2022 primaries failed.
The governor bemoaned the fact that they were putting a lot of effort and resources into undermining the APC in the upcoming presidential election.
El-Rufai asserted that the evil people are destroying Nigeria’s democracy by using the Federal Government and the President as convenient cover.
The governor on Thursday addressed the people of Kaduna amid the scarcity of new naira notes after the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, redesigned N200, N500 and N1000 notes.
Buhari had earlier ordered that the old N200 notes be re-introduced into circulation, as they will remain legal tender until April 10.
El-Rufai noted that the Buhari government disobeyed the February 8th ruling of the Supreme Court by continuing to say the February 10 deadline stands, adding that “It is shocking to see the blatant violation of the subsisting and continuing order of the Supreme Court that ALL the old and new notes should continue to be legal tender until it gives judgment in the case filed by the Kaduna State Government along with several others.”
He said, “The address by the President earlier this morning limiting the legal tender status of old notes to only N200 amounts to total disregard and disobedience of the ruling of February 8th which was extended further yesterday by the Supreme Court.
“The misguided action of the Attorney-General to mislead the President into engaging in this public violation of the order of the highest court of the land shows how desperate the policy architects are to cause national chaos, by showing open contempt for the judiciary.”
The Governor recalled that the Federal Government had made an offer to the agitating governors to accept the circulation of only the N200 notes as a way to stay out of court, but they rejected the offer, insisting the court ruling must be obeyed.
He claimed that, “These evil people using the instrumentality of the Federal Government and the President as convenient covers are willing to truncate our democracy because they have personally lost out.
“They are massively deploying resources and tools to defeat the political party that gave us the platform to serve the country just because they could not impose the candidates of their choice. Let us not help them.”
