Kaduna State governor, on Thursday, vowed to expose the “elements” in the Presidential Villa allegedly working against the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard bearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and wants him to lose the February 25 election.
El-Rufai, in an interview with TVC News on Thursday evening, alleged that the currency swap introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was meant to incite voters against the APC and was orchestrated by the forces who are bent on ensuring that the APC presidential candidate loses the election.
The CBN announced the new Naira notes policy last October and initially gave January 31 as the deadline for the use of the old notes.
On Thursday, El-Rufai said the unnamed people hiding behind President Muhammadu Buhari are pursuing their interests by inciting the voters against the APC through the currency swap.
“We are not against the policy, cashless is the way to go, but you can’t do it in a few weeks. Allow time for every farmer, trader, student, and market woman in the village and to the city to be able to take their money in the banks and get new currencies or take the bullion van to them with the security and change their money.
“It is not everywhere that POS work, and it’s not everywhere you have bank branches. Let’s look for reasonable times according to the CBN Act before the legal tender ceases to exist,” the governor said.
Emefiele and President Buhari have spiritedly defended the policy, saying three months were enough for people with old notes to change them to new ones. However, the scarcity of the new notes has caused suffering for millions of Nigerians with several spending hours on queues to get cash.
El-Rufai, on Wednesday, alleged that the Aso Villa cabal working against Tinubu are doing so because their preferred candidate did not win the APC primary. He, however, failed to mention names.
He said those people working in the name of the president to inflict pain on Nigerians will be exposed after the election.
“Unmasking them (cabals) is not as joyful as defeating them,” he said.
“They will be unmasked in time. We have defeated them when they wanted their people in the national working committee of the APC. We have defeated them when they wanted their own anointed person to be the presidential candidate without due regard, due process or even respect for those of us who are governors, that put the party together, campaign for it and deliver the election twice.”
“We didn’t matter, we are governors and (people saying) governors are corrupt, they are bad, meanwhile, none of them has contested an election and won an election and if they did they won’t win…”