As the new deadline of February 10 for the submission of old redesigned naira notes fast approaches the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, says it has engaged about 750 agents and allocated them 120 million nairas to facilitate currency swap in katsina.
The CBN Director of currency operations, Ahmed Umar who said this when he led an ad-hoc team to monitor Automated Teller Machines of banks and the agents engaged added that the problem of lower denomination faced will soon vanish as the CBN, have more than enough redesigned notes to go round.
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Umar while explaining the rationale behind engaging the agents said, it is to facilitate the currency swap of the redesigned naira notes.
According to him, the agents are supposed to collect from the banks 500 thousand nairas per week to disburse in their communities with 10 thousand naira minimum swapping amount.
For bank ATMs, the CBN Director of currency operations added that there are enough redesigned notes to be loaded urging Nigerians to report any erring banks still dispensing old denominations of the redesigned notes for necessary action.
According to him, “We are advising people to adhere to the deadline and deposit their old currency notes into the Bank. For complaints, people should send us an email to the following mail: newnaira@cbn.gov.ng.”
Meanwhile, a visit to some Banks’ ATMs showed them dispensing the new notes as customers, trade blames over the attitude of some persons coming with more than one card to withdraw.
Bank customers had called for an extension of the 31st January deadline saying, many will lose their monies if the CBN insists on that.
(Editor; Nkoli Omhoudu)
