Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, has sued the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over the floating of Naira.
Falana disclosed this on Friday when he appeared on Channel Television Sunrise Daily to discuss the state of the economy.
According to him, the floating of the naira is illegal as the Central Bank Act allows the bank to fix and determine the exchange rate.
“The major problem is the dollarisation of the economy. As long as the government is not prepared to strengthen the Naira, to make the Naira the only legal tender in Nigeria, we are not going to go further.
“Speaking from a legal perspective, I had to sue the Central Bank of Nigeria at the Federal High Court because section 16 of the Central Bank Act allows the bank to fix and determine the Naira’s rate vis-a-vis other currencies.
“There’s no provision for floating the naira. It’s illegal. You say, ‘The value of the naira will be determined by market forces,’ that is not there in the law,” he intoned.
He further stated that Section 20 subsection 1 of the CBN Act provides that the only legal tender in Nigeria shall be the currency notes issued by the Central Bank: “only the naira.”
While Section 20 subsection 5 of the Act also provides that anybody who spends any other currency in Nigeria without the approval of the central bank has committed an offense and shall be prosecuted with the penalty being six months’ imprisonment.
CBN puts the exchange rate between N744 and N745 as of today, Friday.
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