Nigerians continue to lament the scarcity of naira notes in both urban and rural areas.
This is just as the Central Bank of Nigeria is warning their super agents against charging for cash swap.
In Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, residents continue to spend several hours at Automated Teller Machine points to withdraw new naira notes.
A resident, Alfa Isiaka Asalapa lives at Banni, a suburb of Ilorin where there’s no bank.
He and his household are frustrated that they find it difficult to feed because they do not have cash and cannot operate cashless.
To ease their pains, the Central Bank of Nigeria said it has deployed more than 400,000 super agents or POS operators to swap old notes for new ones.
A CBN super agent, Abdulrazaq Saheed got #500, 000 for cash swap.
He has already exhausted the money and has even approached commercial banks for more in order to run his business.
The super agents are not expected to charge for the swapping.
The CBN is asking residents to report any agent who attempts such.
Even though it has lesser value to hard currencies such as dollar and pound, to many Nigerians, these foreign currencies are even easier to get than the naira.
The CBN has asked deposit banks to stop dispensing old notes from the Automated Teller Machines, while most bank branches, even in Lagos and the FCT, had drastically reduced the money loaded in ATMs because of the shortage of the new notes. Some ATMs observed have not been dispensing for days in addition to failed bank networks.
The acute shortage of the new notes is however been felt mostly on the streets where commuters have been left stranded, markets are struggling to stay open while businesses are being forced to rely on electronic transactions.
Large crowd are currently being witnessed in the banking halls, trying to collect new notes and deposit old ones. There were also long queues at the ATMs for those who wanted to make withdrawals.
