Naira redesign: CBN to evaluate exercise as Nigerians cling to old notes

• Published date: 08 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

AS the countdown to the January 31, 2023 expiry date for the current designs of N200, N500 and N1000 gathers pace, top management staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have scheduled a series of meetings for later this week to evaluate the transition so far.

The meetings are coming against the backdrop of mounting complaints from the public that the new naira designs are not circulating well enough.

Although commercial banks have been operating on Saturdays as part of their own efforts to enable the public turn in their old currencies in exchange for the new ones, reports from across the country showed that the old notes are still very much in use and the new ones scarce.

The Nation learnt that top officials in the Banking Supervision and Currency Operations departments of the CBN would be meeting later this week to evaluate the reasons why much of the money expected to have been harvested from the Naira redesign decision is yet to come in.

The apex bank has consistently rejected advice from stakeholders to extend the deadline for the old naira notes exchange.

In fact it has launched a digital countdown metre on its website to indicate the number of days left for the old notes to remain as legal tenders.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Modibbo Hamman Tukur, said last week that it appeared some Nigerians were not in a hurry to return the affected old notes.

'People are seeing that there is stolen money out there but the record is showing that people are not even rushing to bring it back to take the new notes,' he said.

Tukur expressed concern at the situation and warned that 'if it is not controlled you know what will happen because this is a developing economy. It's not all the sectors that are fully developed.'

He said the large volume of cash outside the banking system was giving rise to excess liquidity crisis.

His words: 'Excess liquidity has to do with disbursement...