Residents Commend CBN, Decry Unavailablity Of N200 Notes
By Chima Azubuike
Some residents of Riyal, and Dawaki quarters, on Thursday commended the Central Bank of Nigeria for coming to their communities to swap the redesigned notes.
Our Correspondent reports that CBN in collaboration with Access bank POS operators stormed the street to swap old N1000, N500 notes to the delight of residents.
Speaking in an interview with our Correspondent Abdullahi Mustapha,who operates business decried the absence of N200 notes amongst the currency to be swapped.
According to him, the Apex bank has shown determination to ensure no one was left behind, stressing that it was a commendable method.
Mustapha said, “I want to thank Central Bank of Nigeria for bringing the advocacy and money closer to us. However, we don’t see N200 notes on ground, so collecting and giving change is difficult.”
Also speaking, Aishatu Mohammed, a trader, lauded the redesigned notes initiative, adding that “since the swap began I’m yet to see the new N200 naira notes. I don’t know what the challenges maybe be.”
She noted that gradually the notes were becoming available for all to use.
Responding, Director, Development Finance Philip Yila, who was represented by Deputy Director Ahmed Barau, said the N200 notes would arrive tomorrow (Friday), stressing that efforts were on to ensure it circulates.
He said, “For now we don’t have them (N200), with us I believe by tomorrow with the consignment we are expecting we hope to get some 200 notes. This is abit of a challenge not just this centre it actually across the country because there is a movement from Lagos, Bauchi and by tomorrow we expect more new notes to come to Gombe and we will continue with the exercise, even though we experienced some challenges around the new notes hopefully the situation will improve.”
While expressing optimism that the collaboration with Bank operators would drive the process, Yila said the CBN would not tolerate acts of sabotage.
“This is the second phase of our advocacy campaign. We felt the exercise would be executed better by making use of the agents as distribution points we were able to identify six agents for this agents operating six different locations. So far so good the exercise is progressing fine.
“Well, some banks their practices are not so encouraging I do believe that they are given new notes from the CBN, we had to be there for them to load their ATM machines to enforce the loading on their own they felt reluctant to load, could it be they are keeping the new notes for their prime customers ?or not it quite true the evidence of sabotage by the banks are obvious,” Yila added.
He noted that there would not be shift in date, following bottlenecks adding that, “It will be abit difficult to say because even the president said there is no going back, the governor of CBN when he was asked also said there is no going back for now 31st January remains sacrosanct. The Central Bank listens to feedback let’s just wait and see what will happen the date remains sacrosanct.”
