The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola (SAN), has argued that the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari declaring the N500 and N1,000 notes as illegal tenders was not a direct affront to Supreme Court that had temporarily halted the move to ban the old currencies by February 10, 2023.
Speaking recently on TVC, monitored by POLITICS NIGERIA, the former Lagos State governor maintained that President Buhari only took the step to help ameliorate the pains of Nigerians who were becoming the unintended victims of the naira redesign policy.
“I think that the principle about respecting and awaiting the outcome of a court decision sometimes has been stretched, if I may use that word,” Fashola said.
“There is also a lot of jurisprudence and scholarship about the boundaries of contempt in actions done and in things said. If I shut the door on your finger, and you went to court to say that the court should direct me to remove or open the door, do I say let’s wait for the outcome of court decision when you are in pain, and people are in pain?
“The question to ask is if I attempt to open that door, would you, the person in pain, say I was acting in contempt or would you gladly have me open the door and then go back to the court and say the matter we have resolved it?
“And that is another angle to look at this thing because I think that whatever interventions the president sought to make were interventions in response to the very palpable pain and I think he said that much in his speech about the unintended consequences of the policy.”
