The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, has said the dollar might drop to ₦200 after the redesigning of the naira. Bawa stated this in an interview with Deutsche Welle (DW) Hausa Service, saying President Muhammadu Buhari did well to approve the redesign.
He said, “The law says the redesigning of Naira notes should be done every eight years, but we spent 20 years without any changes on them.” And that resulted in 85 percent of the money being in circulation and not in banks. When CBN came up with this redesign, the dollar moved to N880 and later dropped to N680 or thereabouts.
The EFCC chair also said there is no political motive behind the idea and called on Nigerians to report any person with siphoned money.
“There is no political motive in this; some people siphoned and hid public funds, that is why we want them to bring them out, and nobody says they should not bring them, what the government says is let them deposit such money in banks.”
“We assure Nigerians that we are always ready to receive reports of any person with suspiciously hidden money, and if investigated to be true, we will give them 5 percent of the money,” he added.
It will be recalled that officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission raided the offices of black market currency dealers in Abuja in recent weeks, arresting an unconfirmed number of suspects.
It was gathered that the officials, armed to the teeth, stormed the Sheraton Hotel area of Abuja to arrest some Bureaux De Change operators.
An eyewitness noted that the arrested suspects were dragged into waiting vehicles, as pedestrians trudged by the scene.
During the week, the naira had depreciated further against the dollar at the parallel market, as it exchanged for N880 per dollar as of Monday, October 31.
