Currency Redesign: Open Letter To Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, By Gloria Mabeiam Ballason Esq

In the normal course of events, this would have been an engagement on marking down your last 100 days as Governor of Kaduna, Nigeria’s third largest state.

However, your sudden love for the masses and the rule of law against your customary disdain for the masses and penchant for picking and choosing what laws to obey; makes this letter imperative.

Over the last two weeks, you have struggled hard to stop the redesign of Nigeria’s currency. What you are doing is neither random nor incidental. True, Nigerians are undergoing an unprecedented scenario of cash and money crunch and citizens are having to buy the naira with naira. Difficult as the situation is, your intervention is not without purpose; it is in the course to executing a plan – a plan to ensure your presidential candidate moneys himself into governance. In furtherance to your plan you hope to conscript the people of Kaduna state as your foot soldiers against the Federal Republic of Nigeria- now that is downright dangerous!

In your broadcast of Thursday 16 February, 2023, you told the people of Kaduna State to continue to use currencies that have been abrogated by the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Presidency. You have also committed to seal off and prosecute persons and organizations in Kaduna who do not accept the currencies. By your broadcast, you have invoked for yourself, executive, legislative and judicial powers. You are inciting the people in Kaduna state to overthrow the Federal Government for the establishment of a Kaduna Republic which you imagine should have its own currency and sovereignty within the Nigerian state.

You have not only thumped the President in the chest, you have also trampled under foot the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which enshrines currency, coinage and legal tender as the 15th item under the exclusive legislative list.

This is a grave offence against public order.

On the 6th of February, 2023, you wrote about fifth columnist that do not mean well for Nigeria. The problem is, you appear not to see that you are what you described. Indeed, there are none so blind than those who would rather not see.

You seem to ignore how volatile elections are in Nigeria and how your actions at heating the polity at this moment is a terrible idea. During the 2019 elections, you carried out the same experiment in Kaduna when you trumped up a story of 66 Fulanis being killed in Kujama, a story the State Commissioner of Police denied. You have now moved your antics to the national space and you are pitching your ploy against a Supreme Court ruling in a matter that is purely an executive prerogative.

Separation of powers exists for good cause – the cause of democracy.

The people of Kaduna State and Nigerians have laboured under the yoke of the present administration. The democratic train is fast moving to February 25, 2023 (in 8 days), it will be in your own interest to jump off the rail track.

You have recently been all about your lovey dovey affection for ‘talakawas’; which of them do you refer to? For the avoidance of doubt, here is a summary of your score sheet in the talakawa and governance business:

1. Kaduna State under your administration, has witnessed unprecedented insecurity and deaths. You admitted to accessorizing murders by ‘paying killers to stop killing’ yet in the urban, rural and suburban areas, people and ‘your talakawas’ are either killed, kidnapped or on the line to suffer either of the two dreadful fates.

interview-why-i-paid-herdsmen-to-stop-southern-kaduna-bloodshed-el-rufai-the-gov/

2. At $586.78 million, Kaduna State has the highest foreign debt profile of all the states next only to Lagos state.

3. You threw thousands of talakawa traders out of jobs by demolishing markets and destroying goods and services without compensation.

4. You made hundreds of thousands of people homeless by demolishing their homes without compensation and devoid of legal cause.

5. You destroyed the houses of those who held different opinions to yours in your own party and outside it. Sen. Hunkuyi’s home you demolished and turned into a park. Former Attorney General, Inuwa Abdulkadir died while waiting for justice for his destroyed house.

6. You sacked thousands of teachers from their jobs and refused to pay teachers their salaries. Some teachers had it worse, they were killed while trying to undergo needless verification exercises you imposed.

7. Traditional Rulers were killed under your watch in questionable circumstances while you decapitated what remains of the institution – proscribing chiefdoms, changing the identity of people and sacking traditional rulers.

8. The children of talakawas cannot go to school because of the over 200% increase in school fees while in Southern Kaduna, you shut down tertiary institutions at your wims.

9. The Nigeria Labour Congress tried to resolve the crises between you and Kaduna State workers but you turned the NLC’s intervention into a wrestling spree.

10. Even the journalists and activists who endeavored to report the rape of law and justice carried out by your government, were arbitrarily thrown by you into prisons.

The verdict of Nigeria’s Senate is that you are not a fit and proper person to occupy public office.

At this point, My dear Governor, it should immediately be clear to you, that you are already known for who you are rather than the overnight self-acclaimed activist for the masses you seek to make yourself out to be.

Let Democracy Thrive and Get Thee Off the Way.

Gloria Mabeiam Ballason

17/2/2023