Wilson Adekumola
A legal practional, Barrister Jesutega Onokpasa has criticized President Buhari’s address to Nigerians in national broadcast on Thursday allowing only the old N200 naira note back in circulation saying the national broadcast was weird and unbelievable.
He said , the funny thing about law is that it is what it is and not what you wish to make of it.
He maintained that the Supreme Court’s order restored things to the status quo ante, therefore absolutely all denominations remain legal tender till the court says otherwise.
The lawyer said, “What President Buhari has done in his truly weird and most unbelievable national broadcast is to seek to sit on appeal over a Supreme Court order!
“It is not up to him or the CBN to pick and choose which denominations are legal tender – the Supreme Court says all are legal tender.
“It is not up to the government or anyone else, for that matter, to pick and choose what parts of a court order to obey, ” he declared.
While condemning the declaration of only the “old” 200 naira notes, and, not its 500 and 1000 naira counterparts, as egal tender, he argued that “Our President is most rascally attempting to exercise extrajudicial review over a pronouncement of the Supreme Court.
“This is brazenly illegal as it gets and it is now our very President, himself, performing unconstitutionality and machinating anarchy in our country!
“This is just too irretrievably shameful.
“Truth is, regardless of Mr. President’s patently illegal dictates, the position of the law, as it stands, is that absolutely all denominations are legal tender.
“It is the constitutional obligation of Mr President to enforce the law, as such, or he is violating his oat of office,” he submitted.
