The Central Bank of Nigeria has insisted that there is no
going back on the January 31 deadline for the old 200, 500 and 1,000 naira
notes, as they will cease to be legal tender in the country.
The CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele reiterated the apex bank’s
stance after the Monetary Policy Committee meeting in Abuja on Tuesday.
Emefiele also insisted that enough time had been given to
Nigerians to swap their old naira notes for new ones.
This is as he also said that kidnapping and ransom-taking
had reduced since the three banknotes were redesigned.
Many Nigerians have however lamented the unavailability and
scarcity of the new notes, decrying that banks up till today, were still giving
out the old naira notes to customers with the deadline only a few days away.
Meanwhile, the CBN in its efforts to ensure that everyone is
carried along embarked on a cash swap programme nationwide to enable those in
the unbanked areas to exchange their old notes before the January 31 deadline,
however, excluding Lagos and Abuja mobile money/Point of Sales operators from
the programme.
The CBN also recently ordered commercial banks to
immediately stop over-the-counter withdrawal of the new notes and load their
Automated Teller Machines with the redesigned naira notes to boost its
circulation.
However, despite the efforts of the apex bank, bank
customers have continued to lament the scarcity of the new notes
In a related development, the House
of Representatives, on Tuesday, summoned commercial banks over the scarcity of
new naira notes.
The Managing Directors/Chief Executive Officers of the
banks, under the auspices of the Bankers’ Committee, are to meet with an ad hoc
committee of the House to be chaired by the Majority Leader, Alhassan
Ado-Doguwa, on Wednesday (tomorrow).
The meeting is for the banks to explain the alleged supply
shortage from the Central Bank of Nigeria, after which the lawmakers would
invite the leadership of the apex bank for questioning.
The House further resolved that the window for swapping the
old notes with the new ones be extended by six months.
Meanwhile, the Senate on Tuesday similarly appealed to the
apex bank to extend the deadline by six months as well, from January 31 to July
31, 2023.
The CBN on October 26, 2022 had announced its plan to
redesign the three banknotes. The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari
(retd), subsequently unveiled the redesigned N200, N500 and N1,000 notes on
November 23, 2022, while the apex bank fixed January 31 deadline for the
validity of the old notes
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