17th February, 2023
Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo (SAN) on Friday said President Muhammadu Buhari is not above the Supreme Court and should have obeyed its order on the old Naira notes.
Buhari trampled the Supreme Court underfoot on Thursday when he announced that only the N200 notes should be in circulation and that the N500 and N1,000 notes should ceased to be legal tender.
The Apex Court had on February 8, 2023 ordered the CBN to allow the old notes to be in circulation pending the determination of the case before it. The court also renewed the order on February 15, but the president disregarded it.
Speaking in an interview on Channels TV’s The 2023 Verdict on Friday, Keyamo said if he were the Attorney General of the Federation, he would have told the president to obey the Supreme Court’s order.
Keyamo said in his view, the President acted honestly without intention to slight the Supreme Court, but that he might have acted on wrong advice.
He said he did not give that advice as it was not his responsibility.
“I don’t know who gave that advice. I want to say this openly because tomorrow, people will ask me where I stood at this time,” he said.
Keyamo added that Buhari might have thought he was playing safe by saying, ‘Before you decide this matter in court, may I just provide some middle ground so that country burning, there are riots everywhere, so let me just try and provide some succour to the people, whilst acknowledging the matters are in court.”
According to him, if he were to advise Buhari, “I would have advised differently. I did not advise him. It’s not my responsibility; I don’t know who.”
On what his counsel would have been, he would have asked him to “comply strictly with the terms of the order of the Supreme Court, [which is that] all the old notes should circulate for now side by side with the new notes because that is the order of the Supreme Court.
“All authorities in Nigeria must obey the orders of the Supreme Court.”
Keyamo said anything contrary to obeying the order of the Supreme Court was a descent to anarchy.
He added that the day people begin to disobey the order of the Supreme Court is an invitation to “revolutionary intervention or other kinds of interventions” in the nation’s democracy.