CBN REACTS TO SCARCITY OF NEW NAIRA NOTES IN ANAMBRA

REPORTER: UCHE NDEKE

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it is monitoring the activities of commercial banks and will not hesitate to sanction any of them that fails to load new naira notes in their Automated Teller Machines.

The Branch Controller of CBN, Awka, Mr. Benedith Maduagwu, stated this in an interview with Radio Nigeria.

According to the CBN branch Manager, enough new currency notes had been minted and made available to the commercial banks for distribution to customers through various ATM points across the country.

Mr. Maduagwu hinted that the CBN has also been embarking on mystery shopping and monitoring bank ATMs to ensure that they were dispensing the new notes.

Also, the Director, Other Financial Institutions Supervision Department, Mrs. Nkiru Asiegbu, encouraged the people to embrace cashless policy by doing more of electronic transactions.

She explained that the CBN had taken note of the accusations and claims about commercial banks hoarding the new naira notes, hence the directive to them to always load new notes in their machines, to ensure that they would not end up in possession of a few persons.

Mrs. Asiegbu said the security printing and minting was producing enough notes for the CBN while the business hours of commercial banks had been extended from Monday to Saturday to ensure that customers were not caught up with the January 31st deadline.

EDITED BY CHUKWUBUIKE MADU