A former presidential aspirant, Stanley Osifo has impressed on the federal government and the Central Bank of Nigeria the need to allow old N200, N500 and N1000 notes to co-exist with the newly redesigned notes as legal tender till December 2023.
This, he said, would help to reduce the tension across the country.
Osifo who made the call during a telephone chat with The Nation in Benin-City, the Edo state capital on Friday, said the old N200 note that president Buhari approved in his Thursday broadcast, to return to circulation with newly redesigned notes cannot assuage the excruciating pains and agony that shortage of bank notes has inflicted on Nigerians.
He urged the authorities to borrow a leaf from the implementation of redesigned N100 note by the Jonathan administration that coexisted as legal tender with the new one for many years after its introduction in 2013.
Reacting to allegations of vote buying in the forthcoming elections as one of the reasons for the policy, the APC chieftain noted that the current hardship that many Nigerians are going through may directly or indirectly trigger vote buying among the electorate which the government is trying to prevent.