Human Rights Lawyer, Femi Falana has dragged Central Bank of Nigeria to court over the floating of Naira currency.
Falana revealed this while speaking in an interview on Channels Television on Friday, 18th August.
Recall that CBN as at June, told all Deposit Money Banks to freely float Naira against Dollar including other currencies, at this time Naira was was traded between 730 and 755.
However, in the interview, Falana described the decision of floating naira as ‘illegal’ and it is being challenged in court.
Falana said, “There’s no provision for floating the naira. It’s illegal. You say, ‘The value of the naira will be determined by market forces.’ That is not there in the law.
“I’ve had to sue the Central Bank of Nigeria at the Federal High Court because Section 16 of the Central Bank Act has imposed a duty on the Central Bank to fix and determine the rate of the naira vis-a-vis other currency.”
As of Friday, the CBN puts the exchange rate between N744 and N746.
Falana also said that Section 20(1) of the CBN Act provides that the only legal tender in Nigeria shall be the currency notes issued by the Central Bank: “only the naira.”
Section 20 (5) of the Act also provides that anybody who spends any other currency in Nigeria without the approval of the central bank has committed an offence “and shall be prosecuted”, he explained, adding, “The penalty is six months’ imprisonment.”
Falana argued further that as long as government officials are not prepared to strengthen the naira and make it the only legal tender in Nigeria, “we’re not going to go far”.
On the Federal Government’s approval of N5 billion for each state and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to procure food items for distribution to the poor in their respective states, Falana said the measures were diversionary.
He said, “They are temporary measures. Some of them are quite diversionary and the people in government have not addressed the root of the crisis, which is the dollarisation of the economy.”
Falana added that the palliative sent to different states will be eaten up by dollarisation of the economy.
