Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, has attributed the scarcity of the redesigned naira notes to banks’ disregard for guidelines issued by the apex bank on how the new notes should be disbursed.
Emefiele stated this during a meeting with the ad-hoc committee of the House of Representatives on the review of the CBN’s cashless policy and extension of the timeframe of the currency swap programme of the bank, in Abuja, yesterday.
The redesigned naira notes, namely, N1,000, N500, and N200, were introduced on December 15, 2022.
Notwithstanding the behaviour of the banks, Emefiele assured that no Nigerian would lose money under the Naira redesign project adding that the project is in the overall interest of Nigerians and the economy.
Lamenting the disappointment of the CBN with the actions of the banks, Emefiele said, “We held several meetings with the deposit money banks and provided them with guidance notes on processing on collection of old notes and the distribution of the new notes. These include specific directives to the banks to load the new notes into the ATM nationwide to ensure an equitable and transparent mechanism for the distribution of the new notes to all Nigerians. We wanted to be sure that the currency is coming out as it’s issued to the banks and that the banks must go through a process that is equitable and transparent.
“We say we don’t want customers to go to banks, to treat some customers as priority and some as less important. When you go to the counters, depending on the large size of business that you give to the bank, as we are issuing you with this currency, load these monies into your ATM. Ladies and gentlemen, the ATM is a robot. You just give it the command. The maximum anybody can collect is N20,000 or N40,000, that’s what everybody collects. Whether you are a priority or not a priority customer. That’s the reason behind this decision. Everyone goes to the ATM and of course, they have to load those monies into the ATM.
Naira notes in parties
“I addressed the bankers on Sunday and I expressed to them my disappointment and in fact, the disappointment of the president, disappointment of leaders in the country with the way this has gone on because many of us have unfortunately seen the new naira instead of being used for the purpose it’s meant, the new naira is being used in parties, in celebrations and some of them said well, maybe it’s money from the ATM and I said no, money from the ATMs are already broken. They are in leaflets but what we saw being stamped on people at parties were packages of the new Naira notes which means they had breached certain aspects of the guidance note we gave to them”, he said.
Appeal to Nigerians
Appealing to Nigerians to be patient with the CBN, Emefiele said: “We know in the process that some will be hurt, I will say temporarily. But it’s a pain that I will appeal to all of us to please show some understanding because the overriding benefits to Nigerians is what we are interested in which is about making our economy stronger than combatting the high incidence of insecurity”, he said.
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