By Chimaobi Nwaiwu, NNEWI

THE Osakwe Industrial Cluster, operators, a conglomeration of Small and Medium Scale Industrialist in Awada near Onitsha, have yesterday described the recent Naira redesign and its circulation as counterproductive to economic development, a coup against the masses and an attention-diverting measure that is politically motivated.

The small industry operators disclosed this through their President Chief Johnson Okolo while addressing newsmen yesterday at the Industrial Cluster on the damage the policy and its implementation, has done to their business and other business enterprises.

Chief Okolo, said that the #End SARS protest would have been a huge joke to the way Nigerian masses would have reacted to the outcome of the result of the just concluded Presidential if the Naira redesign and its deliberate poor circulation was not used to disarm and divert the attention of the people from protesting against election fraud.

According to Chief Okolo, “The people behind the Naira redesign and rendering the country cashless had the intention of manipulating the presidential election and they knew what the outcome would have been if they did not come up with Naira redesign and withdrawal of money in circulation in the counter, thereby rendering the masses who would have by now been on the streets in protest against the outcome of the presidential election cashless and hungry.

‘The masses who by now would have been on the streets in protest against the selection they called the election, are now struggling in the banks to collect N5,000 being given by banks to feed their families, they are powerless, frustrated and hungry, and now struggling in their respective banks to get a token of N5,000 cash to feed their families and solve personal matters.

“For us, the Naira redesign is a coup against the masses, it was well planned and executed to divert the attention of the masses that would have reacted more dangerously over the outcome of the just concluded presidential poll than they did during the #End SARS protest in the country. So Naira redesign was a fast trick played by the government and they succeeded in their plans.

“I don’t believe it has anything good to do with the Nigerian economy other than to serve their political and personal interest. If there is really a Naira redesign, where then is the new Naira, there is no new Naira anywhere and the old one is nowhere to be seen.

,’If you have no new Naira, where are the old ones, why can’t a person write a Cheque of N1,000,000,000, (One million naira) and cash it, you can’t cash a Cheque of N100,000, old or new Naira and you are telling us out redesigned Naira and you want us to believe you. You have crumbled our businesses, and made us hungry, sick and handicapped”