Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Godwin Emefiele has called on commercial banks to collect and give customers the redesigned naira notes or face sanctions.
Mr Emefiele made the call when the apex bank took its sensitisation tour on the adoption of the newly redesigned naira notes to Computer Village, Ikeja, on Wednesday in Lagos.
He said that the new naira notes were in the apex bank’s vaults awaiting pick up by the commercial banks.
“We have been calling upon the banks to approach the Central Bank of Nigeria across the country to come and pick up the new notes; we have even waived some of the conditionality for accessing currency notes in order to accommodate the banks.
“The banks were being given slots before, but now the Central Bank of Nigeria is bending over backward to accommodate the demands of the banks in order to service them, so that they can service you and so that everybody will have access to the new naira notes,’’ Emefiele said.
Emefiele who was represented by Kofo Salam-Alada, director of CBN legal services department, said that the apex bank was seriously working to ensure that the new notes permeated everywhere.
He said that the apex bank was currently going around commercial banks to monitor banks and their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to ensure that they stopped paying customers the new naira notes over the counter but via the ATMs.
Emefiele said: “part of what we are doing is that we have monitors going around the banks now, I have been to some ATMs this morning and I’ve lodged a report and I’ve spoken to the management of the various banks.”
He also said that penalties await any bank which failed to come and pick up the new notes and failure to lodge money into their ATM machines.
He assured the marketers that the experiences they were having would soon be sorted out.
Emefiele reiterated that the January 31 deadline for the submission of the old naira notes was sacrosanct, urging people to go and deposit their old notes and not to be caught unawares.
President of the Coalition of Associations in Computer Village Timmy David urged the CBN to enforce their mandate by ensuring that the new notes were accessible before the deadline.
“There should be no banks that should not be given the new naira notes from the ATMs, all ATMs should load the new naira notes.
