Says ex-VP ‘opportunistic’

The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore, has knocked the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, over his (Atiku’s) stance on the naira crisis ravaging the country.

Sowore said Atiku was an opportunist who thought he could capitalise on the “poverty-inducing” naira redesign policy to win the presidential election.

The publisher of Sahara Reporters stated this in a tweet posted to his Twitter handle on Monday morning.

Sowore alleged that the naira redesign policy was “fraud” targeted at hurting “poor Nigerians.”

“Opportunistic @atiku thought he could capitalise on the poverty-inducing Naira Design to win election. Any real leader would have known that ‘naira design’ fraud was gonna […] hurt poor Nigerians. Reason I keep saying there is no difference. He’s coming to sell everything,” Sowore tweeted.

Sowore was reacting to Atiku’s new stance that the CBN naira redesign policy is hurting poor Nigerians after having supported the policy in an earlier stance.

The former vice president in a tweet on Sunday night, also urged the apex bank to allow commercial banks accept deposits of the old N500 and N1,000 notes.

Atiku wrote, “The CBN currency policy is hurting ordinary citizens and those who legitimately earned their money.

“The apex bank should, as a matter of urgency, allow commercial banks to join the CBN in the collection of the deposits of old N500 and N1000 notes. The new currency should be immediately made available in sufficient quantities to alleviate the suffering of the masses.

“I assure you that when we come to power by the mandate of your votes, the PDP administration will not allow any Nigerian who legitimately earned their money to lose a single kobo of it. You can take that promise to the bank because our aim is to create prosperity and not to impoverish our people.”

Atiku had always been in support of the naira redesign policy of the CBN and he also opposed a further extension of the February 10 deadline saying that any further extension would destroy the purpose and objective of the policy.

He had, however, beseeched the Federal Government to avoid making Nigerians scapegoats “in the ongoing battle of titans over the redesign of the naira.”

Meanwhile, newsmen reported that a group, Joint Front of Civil Society Organisations of Nigeria, on Thursday last week described the PDP candidate’s support for the naira redesign policy as “suspicious”

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