By Matthew Tabe
The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, has said the dollar might drop to N200 after the redesigning of the Naira.
Bawa stated this when he spoke in an interview with Deutsche Welle (DW) Hausa service.
Nigeria’s Naira continues to weaken embarrassingly against the dollar in an import-dependent economy; and currently exchanges for N750/$1 in the parallel market, amid spiralling inflation and plunging GDP.
“The law says the redesigning of Naira notes should be done every eight years, but we spent 20 years without any changes on them. And that resulted to 85 per cent of money in circulation not in banks. When CBN came up with this redesigning, dollar moved to 880 and later dropped to 680 or thereabouts,” Bawa said.
“So you see, with this redesigning, dollar may massively fall, who knows…probably to N200,” he affirmed.
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The EFCC boss also said there is no political motive behind the idea and called on Nigerians to report persons with siphoned monies.
“There is no political motive in this; some people siphoned and hid public funds, that is why we want them to bring them out and nobody says they should not bring them. What government says is let them deposit such money in banks.
“We assure Nigerians that we are always ready to receive reports of any person with suspicious hidden money and if investigated to be true, we will give 5 per cent of the money to them,” he said.
CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, on October 27, announced the redesigning of the N200, 500 and N1,000 denominations. He said the new notes will be released on December 15 and that the old designs will cease being legal tenders on January 31, 2023.