Our reporter| President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday expressed doubts about the commitment of banks to the success of the policy, describing them as “inefficient”.
Buhari, who stated this after the meeting with APC governors in Abuja, explained that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) assured him that there was “capacity, manpower and equipment” to print enough new naira notes before he considered giving approval for the naira redesign policy.
“Some banks are inefficient and only concerned about themselves, even if a year is added, problems associated with selfishness and greed won’t go away,” he said.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had given a deadline of January 31 for the use of old notes, but it was recently extended to February 10 as Nigerians struggled to obtain cash from banks across the country.
Some stakeholders have also said the number of days is insufficient to guarantee the widespread circulation of the new notes.
Responding to the development on Friday, Buhari said he demanded an “undertaking from the CBN that no new notes will be printed in a foreign country and they in turn gave him assurances that there was enough capacity, manpower, and equipment to print the currency for local needs”, he, however, assured that given the present situation, he will “go back to find out what was actually happening”.
The APC governors had earlier appealed to the president to allow both the old and new naira notes to co-exist to ease the suffering of Nigerians.
Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, said although the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) mopped up over N2 trillion of the old notes in circulation, only N300 billion worth of new notes were printed.
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