Dele Farotimi, the Obi/Datti campaign spokesperson (South-West), has responded to the Supreme Court judgement against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the usage of old naira notes.
The Supreme Court ruling nullified the CBN deadline of February 10 as the last day for old notes to be accepted.
In response to the development, Farotimi urged that the CBN ignores the Supreme Court’s verdict by an ex parte order.
He spoke while fielding questions from journalists during an interview on Arise TV’s morning show on Thursday.
A seven-man panel led by Justice John Okoro in a unanimous ruling on Wednesday ordered that the notes remain in circulation after Friday, stopping the federal government in an exparte application brought by three northern states of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara.
Faratimi said, “The subject is about jurisdiction and jurisdiction goes to the root of any power that the court might care to assume. A case was taken before the Federal High Court on the same subject and the Federal High Court correctly ruled that it had no power. In my own opinion, I am not a practising lawyer.
“Now, when the CBN has acted even outside of its powers, it must necessarily be a party in a suit directed at its action or in action. When you have a situation where a matter such as this one has drawn public attention and we must understand that it is not only the letter of the law, it is the spirit of the law that must be clearly seen to have been observed.
“We have a situation here where the issue has been politicized to the point where the matter has come into the public space. Candidates have been arrogating to themselves some benefits or disadvantages. Somebody had already gone before the Federal High Court, the High Court assumed on the subject. We are now talking about the assumption of the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.”