The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced on Friday that any commercial bank that failed to give customers the new naira notes will face a daily charge of N1 million per money box.
The CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, announced this at a workshop on the new naira notes, eNaira, and other relevant topics that were organised for market women working at the Ayegbaju International Market in Osogbo.
Emefiele said that the central bank had printed enough naira notes but noted that commercial banks were not collecting them. He was speaking through a CBN Deputy Director named Adeleke Adelokun.
“As of today, CBN has printed enough new naira notes of N200, N500 and N1,000.
“But, what we discovered was that most of the banks that are supposed to collect the new notes have not collected them. So we have put a sanction on the banks.
“Any bank that fails to collect the new notes from CBN will pay N1 million as sanction per box per day and the amount they are to pay now will depend on the number of days they have not collected the notes,” he said.
Emefiele said that the CBN team from Abuja, which had been in Osun since Wednesday, had been going around commercial banks in the state, meeting with their officials to ensure that they were paying out the new naira notes to customers.
He said that the team was at Ayegbaju market to sensitise the market women on the newly-redesigned naira notes and eNaira App as well as how they can subscribe to eNaira for their business transactions.
“We are here to educate you (the market women) on the new Naira notes and the need for you to turn in/deposit your old naira notes on or before Jan. 31 when the notes will cease to be a legal tender,” he said.
In her remarks, the CBN Branch Controller in Osun, Mrs Madojemu Daphne, said that currency management had faced several challenges, hence the need to redesign the naira notes.
“Statistics shows significant hoarding of banknotes by members of the public, with N2.72 trillion out of the N3.26 trillion currency in circulation, as of June 2022, being outside the vaults of commercial banks and supposedly held by members of the public,” she said.
Daphine, who was represented by Mrs Adebayo Omosolape, said that the old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes would cease legal tender by Jan. 31.
CBN Information Clients Officer in Osun, Mrs Oluwatobi Rosiji, explained to the market women how to download the eNaira App and operate on their android phones. (NAN)