PDP Accuses APC Of Opposing CBN’s Cashless Policy Because Of Its Acts Of Electoral Malpractices

An accusation has been levelled against the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) over its alleged objection to the cashless policy introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) alleged that the APC has frustrated CBN’s policy to promote a cashless policy because it wants to continue practising the act of electoral malpractice.

Naija News reports that the spokesperson of the Atiku/Okowa Campaign Organisation, Daniel Bwala, made the accusation while featuring on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on Friday.

According to the PDP chieftain the APC intends to indulge in vote buying in the 2023 election, if not the party won’t oppose CBN’s move to improve free and fair elections through its policies.

Bwala said, “Now what we have seen as progressive growth towards a better election is that there used to be vote-snatching, ballot stuffing and all of that, now when they introduced the electoral act amendment, it sort of took out the idea of snatching of ballots by the fact that there is the electronic transmission of results whilst votes are cast, casting and counting at the polling unit.

“Another thing is the introduction of the bank policy which seeks to stop vote buying because vote buying is one of the major if not major problems that is affecting free and fair processes. Ordinarily, that is to be accepted by everyone without a doubt, unfortunately, there is a party called All Progressives Congress that is consistently opposing this idea. What the CBN policy seeks to achieve is to stop bullion van politics.”

Naija News recalls that the Senate on Thursday urged the CBN to extend its January 31 deadline for phasing out of the old ₦1,000, N500 and N200 notes to June 30th, 2023.

However, Naija News learnt that the ruling APC denied the allegation of frustrating the CBN’s cashless policies by saying it was rather unfortunate the opposition was making unfounded accusations.

A chieftain of the APC, Ayo Arise, who opposed the PDP stand told Channels TV that “It’s unfortunate that the gentleman is attributing the extension to APC or any form of resistance to the cashless policy. It’s just that this is the political season but otherwise you noticed that before Nigerians trooped out to register for the national identity numbers, the Minister of Communications had to compel those who do not have NIN numbers should not to have their phones working, so everybody rushed that.

“Initially there was a term period and subsequently there were extensions, so why did we not tie that to politics? These are policies that come every now and then to improve on many functionalities of the government.”