Five days before the old N200, N500, and N1000 denominations are scheduled to stop being accepted as legal money on January 31st, several merchants and companies in the Lagos and Ogun State axis have begun refusing to accept them for transactions.
The new, redesigned notes are in short supply nationwide, according to THE PREMIER NEWS checks, but traders and company owners are insistent on getting them.
This is in response to the Nigerian Senate’s proposal for an extension of the deadline for the collection of old naira notes, which was supported yesterday by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had earlier this week been requested by the Senate to extend the deadline for exchanging obsolete naira notes to May 31, 2023.
However, the apex bank is certain that the deadline cannot be extended.
The country’s economy and the people living in rural regions, according to Comrade Ayuba Wabba, national president of the NLC, will be negatively impacted by the policy.
Comrade Wabba underlined that even if the policy may be targeted at the wealthy, Nigerian workers and the poor masses are more likely to experience the consequences of the new law while speaking with journalists in Abuja.
The union leader proclaimed that the congress fully agreed with the senate’s stance on the issue.
“I have attempted to reply by writing informally to the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and we also wrote to the president, to say that this new policy of changing our Naira currency needs to be reconsidered,” Wabba added.
We strongly support the senate’s stance and demand that this policy be reviewed and extended so that the banks can collect all of the old notes. We also urge the Central Bank of Nigeria to visit those difficult-to-reach communities.
“You are driving people up against the walls, and people will retaliate shortly. If you travel to the countryside, you will observe how hectic it is when people come to exchange money. There shouldn’t be a policy that encourages hunting like it does presently.
We have urged the government to properly consider this matter before it snowballs into a serious problem. In reality, the situation is worse in rural areas because most of them lack banks, he continued.
While THE PREMIER NEWS checks revealed that some of them eventually gathered the old notes with little coaxing, they vowed that they would begin outright rejection by today and Saturday.
There are long lines at the few ATM locations that are distributing money at the same time that banks appear to have ran out of the new notes and are leaving many Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) around Lagos metropolitan empty. However, despite the approaching deadline of January 31st, 2023, banks continued to pay consumers with outdated notes in the banking hall.
The Premier News’ reporters found that several merchants and service providers refused to accept old notes as payment for their goods and services, while others warned their clients that they will stop accepting old currency by Saturday despite the poor availability of new notes.
The N200 note, which is primarily used by minor traders, is scarce since many ATMs visited in Lagos and Ogun States yesterday were not dispensing cash and those that were only paid out in the old N500 and N1,000 notes.
The deadline for the collecting of old naira notes in Ota, Ogun State, has been set for Monday, January 30, 2023 by merchants, POS, and gas stations. They have notices posted all throughout their business premises informing clients of the deadline in advance. When clients made over-the-counter withdrawals, banks continued to pay them with outdated currency. One of the banks went to paid clients who had refused the old N100 bills.
When withdrawing money inside the banking hall, Festus, a customer, rejected the old notes and said: “I don’t want to hold too much cash because of the deadline, but I need small cash for errands. They offered me N2000 in new notes and N8,000 in N100 notes after I refused the old note. I like it better that way.
However, at supermarkets and malls, customers still used old notes to make purchases, and cashiers continued to provide old notes as change unless they had fresh ones on hand.
There are signs surrounding certain company locations that state that they warned clients before the deadline of January 31 and that they are continuing collecting the old notes in the meanwhile.
Businessman Gabriel Obadina claims that because the conductors do not have the new notes, “people are still collecting the old notes because I used it to pay transport fares to the office.”
In a similar vein, a Chinese person who spoke with THE PREMIER NEWS expressed confusion over what to do, saying, “I have paid old notes into the bank, but now I don’t have access to new ones. What should I do now?”
The Central Bank of Nigeria set a deadline of January 31, 2023, and THE PREMIER NEWS previously reported that dealers in Lagos had claimed they would start rejecting the old N200, N500, and N1,000 notes by this weekend, even as the apex bank announced it would step up efforts to throw out the N200 notes.
To find out who is dispensing the new notes and to identify those who are not, the CBN has also stated that it will start an audit of banks in addition to the on-site monitoring. In the past, it had been stated that banks would be penalized N1 million day.
The assistant Iyaloja of the market, Memud Iyabo Ajoke, noted that traders in the market have been informed of the redesign of the currency and have been told to start rejecting the old notes from Saturday, January 28, 2023, three days to the deadline. She was speaking at a CBN-sponsored awareness-raising event on the new naira notes at the Asejere market in the Makoko neighborhood of Lagos.
She clarified that this is to make sure they don’t have the outdated notes on hand before the deadline on Tuesday, January 31.
Speaking to journalists during the sensitization, Josephine Ajala, deputy director of the CBN’s Banking Services division, said that every effort has been taken to distribute the new notes.
He said, “So there can’t be any ATM machine by the 31st that will dispense old notes.
“We’ve merely come to the conclusion that most people probably just want to be getting or collecting N1,000 notes. All of the provided denominations must be distributed, according to instructions issued to the banks. We are auditing them extensively.
“We are diligently keeping track of them to make sure that the people who need our help the most receive it. Therefore, all of the denominations will arrive to the ATM and should be there.
Ajala said: “We are going to be doing a lot of awareness, and we are going to push people more to get away from cash. The old notes shouldn’t be rejected till the due date.
“We are introducing numerous cashless platforms, rewards, and other things. Therefore, the goal of the central bank is to decrease the amount of currency that we use. When visiting places like some African nations, you may notice that the majority of their currency is digital and comes in small numbers, such as $200.
So, we are working extremely hard to get everyone on board. Cashless transactions are already the norm, albeit this transition will take time.
