Mike Ozekhome, a human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said on Wednesday that the Naira redesign policy would disproportionately affect politicians and vote buyers.
The legal practitioner stated this during an interview today on Channels Television’s ‘Naira Notes Swap Controversy’ topic.
According to Ozekhome, because the new naira policy has taken a toll on politicians, some political elites are now using ordinary citizens as surrogates to stage protests and make the current situation appear worse.
He said:
Because usually, a voter registers closer to his house. There’s no question about that. In some isolated cases, they had registered in a place far away.
The people that this policy will most hit, and that is why those who have been crying more have been the politicians.
At times, they use the ordinary man and women as surrogates, to protest and barricade roads, to show how bad the policy is because they no longer have access to cheap money.
But by the way, a friend asked me, and he said some of the politicians would not be affected, and I asked why? And he surprised me, and it was a matter of fact. He said many of these politicians we are talking about actually own the banks, Ozekhome narrated during the interview.
So if a bank is to dispense money, it will first give money to its Oga, the boss before thinking of others, the SAN added.
He claimed that Nigeria has already been taken over by non-state actors. According to Ozekhome, some elites and wealthy individuals are now wealthier than the entire country.
Ozekhome bemoaned Nigeria’s current debt situation, claiming that the country is borrowing into the future.