The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has appealed to traditional rulers in rural areas to convey the message on the newly redesigned notes to the people.
Deputy Director, Governor’s Department CBN , Mr Moses Ademosu, made the appeal when the bank took its sensitization team on the new naira notes to the Palaces of the Oloja of Epe Land and Olu Epe of Epe Kingdom, in Lagos.
Mr Ademosu informed the Obas about the apex bank’s withdrawal policy and the newly redesigned notes.
He said that the old naira denominations of N1000, N500 and N200 would cease to be legal tender by Tuesday next week, being January 31st.
Cue in; What we are here to do is to solicit your support to help us inform your people that they should take their old notes (N1,000, N500 and N200) to the banks because as from Jan. 31, they will not be acceptable anywhere.
“They should take it to the bank or find a way to send it via the Point of Sale machines (POS) or any other electronic channels that they can use to carry out their banking services,” he said.
The Oloja of Epe Land, His Royal Majesty, Oba Kamorudeen Ishola Animashaun, who urged the Apex bank to ensure availability of the new notes, promised to be its mouthpiece in his domain.
“The best thing is for the CBN to assist the banks and compel them to make sure that the new notes are available for the people.
“If the banks do not dispense the new notes now to the people, it will cause another problem which we do not want, and at the same time, we have to be very careful because it is time for élection.
So, that is my appeal to the CBN governor and its team; we appreciate you, we honour you, we agree with you, we will try to tell our people.
“We will tell the town crier to go round the community to make sure he alerts the people and make sure they agree and comply with the government position, ” he said.
On his part, the Olu Epe of Epe Kingdom, Oba Sefiu Olatunji Adewale, appealed to CBN to extend the Jan. 31 deadline to give the people time to take their old notes to their banks.
“You know that we have less than two weeks to the end of this month, I appeal to CBN to extend the deadline because Epe is a difficult terrain.
“Your interest should not just be about changing the denominations but it should be done in a way that people will take disadvantaged”.
The Apex bank’s sensitisation team also visited Oluwo Modern Fish Market to sensitise the traders about the new notes and the expiry date for the old notes.
Deputy Director, Other Finncial Insitutions supervision department, CBN, Mrs Monsurat Vincent, advised the fish traders to deposit their old 200, 500 and 1000 notes as the deadline is sacrosanct.
They shared flyers to them while also distributing samples of the notes to the Iya Oloja of Oluwo Modern Fish Market.
The CBN monitoring team also visited some banks in the community to check if they were dispensing the new notes.
Out of five banks visited, only one was dispensed the new notes.
The banks officials gave reasons of logistics as what was making them not to have enough new notes to load in their Automated Teller Machines.
The team also visited Mile 12 Market, Ojuoye market at Mushin as well as Tejuosho market.
