Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has clarified that commercial banks in the country will still accept old naira notes from Nigerians who may still have such in their possession after the February 10 deadline.
Team@orientactualmags.com learned Emefiele, who said this while appearing before the ad hoc committee set up by the House of Representatives on the CBN naira redesign exercise on Tuesday, noted that no Nigerian will be made to lose his or her money.
The adhoc committee is headed by Alhassan Ado-Doguwa.
It will be recalled that the apex bank had on October 26 last year announced that circulation of the newly redesigned N100, N200, N500 and N1000 naira notes would begin on December 15.
Mr Godwin Emefiele had added that the move was to counter terrorism financing, hoarding of banknotes by members of the public, with statistics showing that over 85 per cent of monies in circulation were outside the vaults of the commercial banks.
The old naira notes were to cease to be legal tender today January 31 until it was extended to February 10 on Monday.
It will also be recalled that Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Femi Gbajabiamila had last week cited Section 20 of the CBN Act to oppose the idea of rejecting the old naira notes.
‘Section 20 says even after the old currency has lost its legal tender status , we are mandated to collect the money. And I stand with the House of Reps on this. If you have your money that you have not been able to send to the bank.
We will certainly give you the opportunity to bring them back to the CBN to redeem it. Either you deposit it into your bank account or you want to do an exchange — we will give you. You will not lose your money. This is the assurance I will give to Nigerians’ Emefiele said .
The CBN governor , who had apologized to the lawmakers for failing to answer the previous summons, added that the policy should have been introduced several years ago and that the CBN had only used the opportunity to make the economy more cashless.
Nigerians , he noted, would soon realize the benefits of the policy.
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Emefiele noted that he was disappointed that the new naira notes are being used at parties which according to him showed that commercial banks had breached the directives , guidelines and instructions given to them by the CBN.
He said the apex bank had since taken fresh measures involving all the security and anti-corruption agencies to arrest the saboteurs.
The benefit of the e-economy had according to him begun to manifest as inflation was not rising while disclosing that the apex bank had also deployed 30,000 agents to ease currency swap for Nigerians that are disadvantaged because of their locations and nature of businesses- Team@orientactualmags.com Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08059100286, 09094171980. Thank you
