Published 31st Jan, 2023

By Tarinipre Francis

On Tuesday, Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), disclosed that commercial banks would still accept the old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes after the new February 10 deadline.

The CBN boss made this known while appearing before the House of Representatives special ad hoc committee on the new naira redesign and swap policy.

This decision, according to him, was in line with the CBN Act 2007.

Following public outcry, the apex bank on Sunday extended its initial January 31 deadline for the old naira note swap.

However, the new banknotes have remained scarce and continued to be inaccessible to the vast majority of Nigerians.

Emefiele was invited by the legislators to provide an explanation for the limited supply of the new naira notes. According to him, the amount of cash in circulation in Nigeria increased from 1.4 trillion naira in 2015 to 3.33 trillion naira in 2022.

He said the CBN ought to be in control of cash circulation in the country and that the directive to permit only ATM withdrawals was to restrict individual daily withdrawals.

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