The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss a suit filed by three state governments challenging the naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).<\/p>\n
According to a report on Channels Television website, a preliminary objection filed by the AGF through his lawyers \u2013 Mahmud Magaji and Tijanni Gazali \u2013 the Federal Government argued that the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain the suit.<\/p>\n
In court filings dated Wednesday, February 8, 2023, the AGF contends that \u201cthe plaintiffs have equally not shown reasonable cause of action against the defendant.\u201d<\/p>\n
They are asking the court to strike out the suit for lack of jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
Citing grounds in support of the objection, they argue that the State Governments\u2019 suit challenges the Federal Government through its agency, the CBN, to withdraw old banknotes from the financial system and introduce new ones.<\/p>\n
With reference to Section 251 of the Constitution, the defence lawyers argue that the suit falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal High Court in matters of monetary policy of an agency of the Federal Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claims or reliefs are not against the federation, but the Federal Government and its Agency, the Central Bank of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Federal Government of Nigeria is distinct from the Federation or the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Plaintiffs have no grievance whatsoever against the Federation of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis suit has disclosed no dispute that invokes this (Supreme) Court\u2019s original jurisdiction as constitutionally defined,\u201d the AGF added.<\/p>\n
Three state governments \u2013 Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara \u2013 \u00a0had sued the Federal Government over the naira redesign policy of the CBN.<\/p>\n
In the suit filed on February 3, the states urged the Supreme Court to compel President Muhammadu Buhari, the CBN and commercial banks to rescind the February 10 deadline for the old N200, N500 and N1000 banknotes as Nigeria\u2019s legal tender.<\/p>\n
Ruling on an ex parte request by the plaintiffs, the Supreme Court, ordered the Federal Government to halt the implementation of the currency redesign policy pending the determination of the substantive suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss a suit filed by three state governments challenging the naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). According to a report on Channels Television website, a preliminary objection filed by the AGF through his lawyers \u2013 Mahmud Magaji […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":55951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[465,2152,48],"class_list":["post-62258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-agf","tag-naira","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}