The removal of Godwin Emefiele as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), according to former Senate President Bukola Saraki, is connected to the 2023 election.
The former governor of Kwara issued a warning to security organisations not to allow themselves to be used to rig the presidential election.
Emefiele was accused of supporting terrorism and committing economic crimes by the Department of State Services (DSS), which hurts the central bank’s reputation and raises concerns about additional currency depreciation.
As a victim of a comparable “politically-motivated charge,” Saraki said in a statement on Wednesday that he had detected some ominous clouds around the DSS court case.
He said that the lawsuit was brought little over two months before the general elections, after the CBN’s strict new rules for the cashless system and redesigned naira.
“As somebody who had been wrongly accused of involvement in the Offa robbery by political opportunists, I feel that a similar intrigue is being weaved by those who are bent on sabotaging the 2023 elections.”
Saraki noted that the DSS lawsuit filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja has been called frivolous and devoid of supporting documentation.
“My position is not to support Emefiele but to support democracy which is being targeted by the plotters.
“With all the due respect that I have for the DSS as a very professional security agency, I still found it very difficult to understand what led to the charges.”
Saraki questioned why the DSS had not offered specific proof that would have allowed the court to make an informed conclusion, leaving space for doubt and conjecture.
According to him, the case is being viewed as a component of “a big conspiracy by those who seek to undermine and destroy the next general election since their calculation on vote buying, rigging, and excessive use of money is breaking apart.”
The statement said, “The new CBN regulation on a cashless regime is guaranteed to irritate the partisan scammers, the cunning politicians, and unpatriotic elements.”
The National Assembly, according to Saraki, was used as a tool by the same actors to meddle with the electoral process by impeding electronic results transmission, the Biometric Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), and new rules on currency exchange and cash withdrawal.
Security services were instructed by the leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to keep their distance from “anarchists and anti-democratic elements posing as Democrats or political actors.”
