• The CBN has disclosed that a commercial bank in Ogun State mismanaged N4 million of the new notes.
• The apex bank says such acts sabotage efforts to make sure the new naira notes are available for all.
• The CBN says it will appropriately sanction erring banks that are involved in such criminality.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has accused a bank in Ogun State of mismanaging and diverting N4 million worth of new notes given to it to distribute to customers. It said that such acts by commercial banks sabotage the apex bank’s efforts in making sure the new naira notes are available for all.

According to Punch, this was disclosed by the CBN’s Deputy Director, Banking Supervision Department, Kayode Makinde, in a chat with newsmen on Tuesday, January 31, 2023, while on a monitoring exercise in Ogun State.

Makinde stated that as a result, the yet-to-mentioned bank and its officials will be appropriately sanctioned following findings that they mismanaged the new naira notes they were given.

CBN says some banks hoarding new naira notes

Makinde disclosed that the CBN also found out that some banks were hoarding the new naira notes in their vaults. He said, on discovering this fact, the CBN compelled the banks to load the new notes into their ATM terminals.

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The banks were directed to ensure the distribution of the new notes and then contact the CBN for more through their respective cash management units. Makinde said:

We have given directives that they shouldn’t pay out new notes via the counter but other notes, some of them did that and ran out of cash. Some of the branches deployed resourceful cash management skills and they never ran out of cash while others experience cash run out and are still waiting for their source. We came across one of them that couldn’t account for almost four million naira of new notes and appropriate sanctions will be placed on them.

In conclusion, the CBN Deputy Director reiterated that cases of sabotage on the part of operators will be dealt with appropriately.

Bank customers lament the scarcity of new naira notes

In the last few weeks, banking halls and ATM points in Nigeria have been flooded by customers hoping to make withdrawals of the new naira notes. Unfortunately, cash has majorly been inaccessible in many banks, ATM terminals and PoS points, causing some form of chaos in the few ATMs where it is available.

Many customers who had no immediate cash with them were forced to accept the old naira notes, in compensation, knowing fully well of the deadline set by the CBN for the depositing of old naira notes in the bank.

As a result of the artificial scarcity, the CBN has directed banks to only issue lower denominations of the naira notes – N5, N10, N20 – to customers for over-the-counter withdrawals.

The CBN also promised to monitor the vaults of banks to ensure that they were not hoarding the notes but issuing them to customers via ATMs.

Banks to accept old notes after February 10 deadline

Two days after the CBN announced the shifting of the deadline for depositing old naira notes to February 10, it has issued a new update.

The development follows an interactive session between the CBN led by the governor, Godwin Emefiele and the members of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, January 31, 2023.

In the course of the interactive session, Emefiele clarified that commercial banks will continue to collect the old N200, N500 and N1000 notes, even after the February 10 deadline. He said that the CBN Act recommends that banks continue receiving old notes, regardless of the expiration.

Source: Legit.ng