The Federal Government will obey the Supreme Court’s decision to halt the Central Bank of Nigeria’s deadline for exchanging old notes on February 10.Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said this during an interview with AriseTV on Thursday, February 9.According to him, the government is hoping that the ex parte decision, which is set to expire on February 15, 2023, will be overturned.He claimed that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place, and that the CBN, a key player in the dispute, was not named as a defendant.Malami, on the other hand, argued that the government’s decision to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling on the old notes deadline was motivated by respect for the rule of law.“The order was granted by the Supreme Court and the order incidentally lapses on Wednesday, which is the day of the hearing, with that position in mind we have taken steps to file an objection challenging the jurisdiction of the court to entertain the matter.Jurisdiction because when you talk of monetary policy, regardless of the characters they take, the central bank is an indispensable and a necessary party for that matter.What we have at hand is a situation where the central bank was not joined as a party and if the central bank as an institution was not joined as a party, the position of the law is clear that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court cannot be properly invoked.So we have given considerations to diverse issues, inclusive of the issue of jurisdiction, and come Wednesday we will argue the case from that perspective, among others,” he said.
