New naira: Reps oppose CBN extension, as anger spreads over scarcity
The House of Representatives has rejected the February 10 deadline for the phasing out of old currency notes announced by the Central Bank of Nigeria on Sunday.
The House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee on New Naira Re-design and Naira Swap Policy on Sunday described the new date as a mere political gimmick to further deceive Nigerians and worsen their economic and social livelihood.
The development came as anger spread across the country over the scarcity of the new notes with several bank customers becoming stranded due to lack of access to the new notes. Retailers and traders have been rejecting the old notes amid long queues at ATM galleries across the country.
However, announcing the new deadline for the phasing out of the old N1,000, N500 and N200 notes on Sunday, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), gave permission for the deadline to be extended to February 10 after his recent meeting with him.
He also gave additional seven days to enable Nigerians to deposit their old naira notes after it ceases to be legal tender on February 10.
The PUNCH reported that the CBN had earlier fixed January 31 as the deadline for the exchange of old N1,000, N500 and N200 notes.
Before extending the deadline, the apex bank had refused to shift grounds despite coming under severe criticisms and significant pressure from the National Assembly, politicians, banks, customers, and key stakeholders. Punch
The CBN governor had also failed to appear before the House four times, prompting the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, Tuesday, to declare his readiness to issue a warrant of arrest against him if he fails to appear before its committee last Thursday.
Gbajabiamila said the lawmakers would reconvene on Tuesday (tomorrow) to take an action against Emefiele and other bank chiefs who failed to honour the house’s summons.
CBN extends deadline
In his statement, however, the CBN governor stressed that the currency redesign programme was necessary to enable more efficient monetary policy decisions alongside curtailing banditry and ransom-taking.
Emefiele said that for 19 years, the CBN hadn’t re-design the naira, whereas, he said, this should normally have been done within a five to eight years window.
Enumerating the merits and benefits of the re-design, Emefiele said, “Our aim is mainly to make our Monetary Policy Decisions more efficacious and like you can see; we’ve started to see inflation trending downwards and exchange rates relatively stable.
‘’Secondly, we aim to support the efforts of our Security agencies in combating banditry and ransom-taking in Nigeria through this program and we can see that the military is making good progress in this important task in Nigeria.”
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