Twelve days ahead of the January 31, 2023 deadline for the old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes to cease to be legal tender, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has urged Nigerians to report banks that fail to load their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) with the newly redesigned notes.
The apex bank vowed to begin to sanction banks that fail to comply with the directive.
At a sensitisation event at the popular Computer Village market in Ikeja, Lagos yesterday, the director, Legal Services department of the apex bank, Mr. Kofo Salam-Alada, who represented the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, also emphasised that, the January 31 deadline for the old notes to cease to be legal tender remains sacrosanct.
Salam-Alada, While noting that he had gone round to some ATMs in Lagos and discovered that some were still dispensing old notes,Salam-Alada, said the apex bank would soon announce sanctions for banks that fail to comply with the directive to load up and dispense the new notes through their ATMs.
Noting that there was more than enough of new notes to go round, he stated that, the shortage of the new notes in circulation was due to the failure of banks to collect the redesigned N200, N500 and N1,000 notes from the vault of the CBN.
“I can tell you today that the CBN, on a daily basis, issues out the new notes. As we speak, banks are with the CBN taking money. We are actually begging banks to come and take money from the central bank. We have these new naira notes in our vaults and we are begging banks to come and take them.
“We found out that a lot of things are happening that we need to checkmates, so we stopped withdrawal of new notes over the counter to ensure that everyone can have access to new notes and not one chief who is known to the manager walks in and carts away all the new notes in a particular branch. That is why we said it should be in the ATMs which cannot distinguish people,” he said.
He added that, “what we are experiencing now will actually ease up very soon, because the banks now know that there will be penalty for failure to come and pick money from the CBN and failure to dispense through the ATM. Tell your members that if they have problems accessing the new naira notes, they can call the CBN to report,” he stated.
Salam-Alada, while reacting to questions from traders in the market that some are selling the new notes, stressed that, anyone caught selling the new notes or any denomination of the naira will face the full wrath of the law in the form of jailtime.
Speaking on the new notes, the president of the Coalition of Associations in Computer Village, Timi Davies, noted that, the production of the new naira notes is a good initiative “but unfortunately the new notes is not well circulated within our market. The ATM machines are not dispensing the new notes and only a few privileged ones seem to be having access to the new notes.
“We want to encourage the CBN and the government to enforce the deadline on the banks. There should be no bank that should not be giving the new naira from their ATM. All ATM should load the new notes. As we are giving the old notes we should be able to get the new notes. If the ATMs are not dispensing, the new notes will not flow around.”
On his part, the Olukosi of Ikeja Land, Chief Lateef Oluseyi, assured CBN of support of the traditional ruling house in educating the community.
Meanwhile, the CBN director dispelled rumors that the new naira was not durable demonstrating that the new notes do not wash off as many had claimed.
He also assured that the new note which, he said, has more than 35 security features is not East for counterfeiters to make, thus reducing the incidence of fake notes.
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