Nigerians continue to groan due to the continuous scarcity of the new Nara notes despite the Central Bank of Nigeria’s deadline extension of the naira redesign policy and different interventions ranging from dispensing of the new currency over the counter to meet the meetings of the governors with the president earlier today.
Reactions have not stopped to trail the new naira note program.
Mr Olumide Esan, a partner at Deloitte Nigeria on TVC’s Business Program, Business Nigeria faulted implementation of the policy.
He said the issue is about implementation.
The United Kingdom in June 2021 changed some of their notes to polymer particularly 50 and 20 pounds notes.
The last day for the use of the old note was designated as September 2022.
Mr Esan noted that Nigeria is a big country with 774 local governments and so many villages and there are lots of remote places where cash is still the basic means of exchange.
The challenge is the timeline which we have set for ourselves and we are putting ourselves under under pressure.
In addition to the cash scarcity, is also the current fuel crisis across Nigeria, many spend hours in queues for cash from ATMs and also queue for cash to buy the product as many stations have refused to accept cash transfers for payment.
Despite the Central Bank Governor announcing a 10-day extension to the deadline to phase out the old currency, the scarcity of the new naira notes persists.
While the Central Bank continues to claim it released more than enough new currencies to Deposit Money Banks, the reality on ground points to the opposite.
