The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has hailed governors in the 36 states for defending the masses over the Central Bank of Nigeria naira redesign and cashless policies.

He said the governors, especially the ones governing the APC states who instituted the suit against the FG and CBN at the Supreme Court, acted well on behalf of the hapless Nigerian masses.

This was contained in a statement by the Director, Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, in Abuja on Wednesday.

The development is coming hours after the Supreme Court of Nigeria has ordered a suspension of the deadline for the swapping of old to new Naira notes by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The Supreme Court issued an interim injunction restraining the Federal Government from suspending the acceptance of the old Naira notes on the Friday February 10, 2023 deadline.”

Reacting to it, Tinubu in a statement said: “I want to salute the courage of our governors, especially the Progressives Governors in APC, who acted to save our country from avoidable and dangerous political crises and social unrest, which the Central Bank policy on new Naira notes has brought on our country.

“Our country was dangerously careering toward anarchy and political and economic shutdown. But with the Supreme Court interim ruling our country has been pulled back from the precipice. We thank our Supreme Court Justices for ruling wisely on the side of the people who have been subjected to undue agony and pain since this policy was announced.

“The Federal Government and relevant stakeholders can now sit down and work out better framework on how to proceed with the new policy without causing any social and economic disruption and inconvenience to our people. We have examples of other countries that have successfully and seamlessly changed their currencies to learn from.

Those countries give a long time, at least 12 months to effect the currency change. They do not engage in a CBN-like Fire Brigade approach. We have seen how a good policy can be poorly implemented to cause unintended problems for the people who should be the beneficiaries. While lessons have been learnt, we must now move on as a country and people with a Renewed Hope for a better tomorrow.

“The sole aim of my running to be the president of our country is to make life better and more abundant for our people and this is an ideal for which I will remain eternally committed to.”