By Temidayo Akinsuyi
Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) on Friday said it is illegal for anyone to spend any other currency in Nigeria, except the Naira which is the official currency of the country.
Falana stated this while appearing as guest on Channels Television programme ‘Sunrise Daily’ which was monitored by QUESTTIMES.
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While bemoaning the poor state of the naira to the dollar and other foreign currencies, Falana blamed the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for yielding to the directives of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) which keeps telling Nigeria to devalue her currency, to the point that it is now grossly undervalued.
He said “Nobody is authorized to spend dollars in Nigeria. That is the position of the law. But what is going on now? How can you pay school fees in dollars? The ordinary people are victims of the distortion of the economy. I was in Benin Republic last year with my lawyers. We had an annual retreat and we spent naira in cefa in Cotonou. We didn’t spend a cent or a dollar. The same thing is going on in Niger”.
“Why should we allow any transaction in Nigeria to be valued in dollars? I am saying under the law, the legal tender in Nigeria are the currency notes issued by the Central Bank and there is no amendment to that law. I am nit talking politics here, I am talking law. I have challenged the Central Bank on this”.
“This guys who are talking about globalization are controlling their own economy everyday. Yet, they tell you here, trade globalization, allow everything to come in. But China and USA are fighting everyday over what should come into our country and what should not be allowed”.
“But here, IMF and World Bank are praising the government. You are looking for the value of the currency. For 45 years, we have been told by these imperialist institutions that naira is overvalued. So, they have been devaluing the currency through dollarization. Now, Bank of America recently said the naira is now undervalued”.
“The guys in the Central Bank are still devaluing the currency, saying naira is looking for its value. When I was an undergraduate, the value is 60k to a dollar but today, it is about N1,000 to a dollar”.
