The Central Bank of Nigeria has been urged by the Senate to extend the date when outdated currency notes must be removed from circulation from circulation from January 31, 2023 to June 30, 2023.
Sen. Mohammed Ndume (APC-Borno), during the plenary on Wednesday, raised a point of order, which led to the senate’s resolution.
The N200, N500, and N1,000 notes will be remodelled by the CBN, which had previously disclosed its plans on October 26.
Invoking Orders 41 and 51 of the Senate Standing Rules, Ndume argued that the request for a date extension should be treated as a matter of urgent national interest in order to prevent impending hardship for Nigerians.
Ndume said: “This senate notes that many Nigerian banks on Thursday, December 15, opened their vaults to customers and depositors to exchange their old currency for the newly redesigned currency which has a stipulated deadline of Jan. 31.
“Some Nigerians are already envisaging long queues in the banking hall across the country as a result of people trying to get access to the new naira note.
“The old notes are expected to be in circulation along the new ones until Jan. 31 when the old ones are expected to be phased out.
“It is expected that many Nigerian businesses will start to rejecting the old notes as soon as banks start paying redesigned notes to customers.”
The legislator added that a recent CBN circular restricting the amount of cash that business entities may withdraw would make it more difficult for people to get the new notes.
He began. “The withdrawal of old notes from circulation, if not extended beyond January 31, will make many Nigerians to be thrown into hardship. We need to avoid the repeat of 1984 experience in terms of the withdrawal of old notes.”
Sen. Adamu Aliero (PDP-Kebbi), who was speaking, agreed that rural residents were unaware of the currency makeover.
He said, “So this motion is very apt and timely. If we insist on the date given by CBN, it will cause a lot of hardship for our rural dwellers. Majority of our people live in rural areas where there are no banks and PoS. It is appropriate we extend the time as suggested in the motion.”
