Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the APC’s presidential candidate, has shared details of how he influenced President Muhammadu Buhari to extend the deadline for exchanging the old naira notes.
When visiting the Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II, in Benin City, Tinubu made it clear that he was particularly concerned to postpone the deadline because “some of our cousins, our wives selling garden eggs, carrots, and roasted corn” required the Naira.
While praising President Muhammadu Buhari for giving the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) approval for the extension of the swap from old to new naira notes, Tinubu claimed that it was the lobby for the extension that caused him to be late for the palace.
Tinubu said: “My coming late is not intentional, it is because of the national politics. “Some of our cousins, our wives selling garden eggs, carrots, roasted corn, they need money and they need Naira.
“In the process, if Naira is cancelled the way it is and we fail to intervene, we have failed in our duties.
Tinubu added: “We have been on this for three to four days and suddenly today, when the President said okay out of great respect he will consider our request for an extension, we were happy.
“I was running back and forth on this and calling him, so that is what we have been doing.
According to Tinubu: “Hopefully, even though we didn’t get all that we wanted, we got an extension by a number of days,” Tinubu said of his efforts in getting President Buhari to push back the deadline on the exchange of the old naira notes.
Highlighting his plans for Edo State, he said: “Benin is the economic centre of this region rich in resources, rich in gas.
“We are working on West Africa gas that will sell in Europe. We would have been making money in this country today if those who said they want power and ruled for 16 years; if they had thought about this, we would have been better”
“Nigeria would have been selling gas and the development for Edo would have been different. “I assure you we are going to mend all those anomalies and Edo will be a centre of economic activities for all,” Tinubu said.