The Central Bank of Nigeria has insisted that the deadline for the old 200, 500, and 1,000 naira notes to stop being legal cash in the country on January 31 cannot be extended.
After the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on Tuesday in Abuja, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, reaffirmed the position of the top bank.
Emefiele further argued that Nigerians had been given adequate time to exchange their old notes for new ones.
This is because he also claimed that since the redesign of the three banknotes, the number of kidnappings and ransom demands had decreased.
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 withdrawalof 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, it was reported that 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