By HABIBU HARISU

The Amalgamated Union of Northern Traders, on Saturday in Sokoto lauded the directives given by Gov. Bello Mutawalle of Zamfara state, for security men to arrest anybody who rejects the old naira notes during transaction.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Gov. Mutawalle was among the Governors who dragged the Federal Government to the Supreme Court, seeking a restraining order to stop the Naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

NAN also reports that the Supreme Court on Wednesday halted the CBN from implementing the Feb. 10 deadline for the validity of old notes as legal tender.

Mutawalle, who described the Naira redesign policy of the CBN as good, however, noted that the policy came at the wrong time, making it difficult to implement.

Speaking to newsmen on behalf of traders, the union’s youth leader, Alhaji Sanusi Daudu-Nufawa, lauded the directives of Gov. Matawalle on security operatives in Zamfara state to closely monitor all the trading activities around markets in order to reduce the suffering of masses.

Daudu-Nufawa noted that informal economic sector can only be revived if our leaders, like Mutawalle, take drastic decision to effectively make people do transactions with both old and new notes.

He said the effort would further reduce and relieve the pains that ordinary Nigerians are experiencing in the face of scarcity of both the old and new naira notes.

He expressed optimism that the circulation of old notes and the gradual withdrawal of old with replacement with new notes would ease peoples’ sufferings.

According to him, he is convinced that those against Gov. Matawalle’s action and victory at the Supreme Court were either misguided or blinded by political chauvinism.

Daudu-Nufawa further commended Mutawalle for standing on peoples interest to ease their sufferings not for political gains.

He commended the National Council of State in their resolution to the government on producing more naira notes and consider peoples plights. (NAN)

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