Supreme Court of Nigeria has validated the usage of old naira notes till December 2023.
On Friday, the apex court question the naira redesign policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), stating that the new naira notes contravenes the 1999 Constitution.
The judgement was delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim. It held that the preliminary objections by the defendants (the Attorney General of the Federation, Bayelsa and Edo states) are dismissed as the matter falls within the jurisdiction of the court to entertain.
Citing Section 23(2)1 of the constitution, the court held that the dispute between the FederaL Government and states must involve law or facts.
Referring to the the President’s broadcast, the apex court affirmed that the naira policy came with a lot of challenges and inadequacies.
The court while accusing the President of dictorship, it said the policy has brought untold hardship to the people, causing them engage in trade by barter in this modern age in a bid to survive.
The Supreme Court judgment comes three weeks after President Muhammadu Buhari declared that old 500 and 1000 naira notes have ceased to be legal tenders in Nigeria.
Buhari, however, ordered the CBN to allow the old 200 naira notes and redesigned 200, 500 and 1000 naira notes to coexist.
The president said only the 200 old naira notes will continue to be legal tender till Monday, April 10, when the CBN had announced the seizure of all the old naira notes as a legal tender.
Following the confusion and hardship brought by the policy Kogi, Kaduna, and Zamfara state governments sued the Federal Government at the Supreme Court and called for a nullification of the CB deadline.
The state governments said they are worried about the effects the CBN naira redesign policy is having on the residents of their states.
The states said that the ten-day extension announced by the Federal Government is still insufficient to address the challenges of Nigerians swapping their old Naira notes for new ones – as virtually all the banks across the country don’t have cash.
