Twenty-four hours after the new naira notes became legal tender, December 15, 2022, Nigerians are yet to get the latest bill.
Investigations by The New Diplomat revealed that several ATM machines, banks are still dispensing the old Naira notes, suggesting that most banks are yet to get the new Naira notes.
It would be recalled that the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had on October 26 announced plans to redesign the N200, N500 and N1,000 notes, while also declaring that the old denominations would ceased to be a legal tender by January 31, 2023.
A random survey conducted by The New Diplomat, showed that only a few Nigerians, particularly the elites are currently in possession of the new Naira notes.
Visit by our correspondents to most of the bank halls in several cities across the country, especially in Lagos and Abuja on Thursday, revealed that several bank branches had run out of the small quantities of the new notes allocated to them from their head offices as early as 12 noon last Thursday.
Some banks visited outside the two states are yet to get their new note allocations as at press time.
An official of Access Bank Plc at the Ojodu branch in Lagos, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “Each cashier was given N100,000 of the new N1,000 bill for onward disbursements to customers seeking over-the-counter payments. We don’t have the other denominations of N500 and N200 yet. We don’t have enough supply of the new notes for now.”
Also, our correspondent observed that the ATMs at the bank branch were dispensing only old naira notes.
Customers were also seen depositing the old bills over the counter, while cashiers were paying out more of the old naira notes at the centre.
