Aminat Yahaya —

Nigeria’s Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola yesterday on Channels Television said the new naira policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria has caused pains to lots of Nigerians.

The policy, which requires Nigerians to swap old naira on the denomination of N100, M200, N500 and N1,000 for the newly redesigned ones, has a deadline of February 10 for the exercise to wrap up.

However, many Nigerians with the inability to get access to cash, have cried out on the inconvenience it has caused due to the short deadline and scarcity of the new notes.

“I empathize with those challenges but some of them are the result of the policy and it is the responsibility of public servants, especially those responsible for those policies to look back and say, ‘Did we intend to cause this pain’? Fashola asked.

“And if the policy is not working, perhaps you have to readjust and to also ask yourself whether you thought this through.

“As a public officer, before and now, I have had cause to reverse myself, when I saw that my policies were causing unintended results.

“So, I have no responsibility on those two areas and therefore I cannot speak to the details of the facts that are available to the policymakers but the important thing is that those policies are not yet delivering the results and are delivering a lot of inconvenience for [people]”, the Minister said.