16 December 222
The newly redesigned N1,000, N500 and N200 bills on Thuresday, December 15, 2022 became a legal tender though it has been unveiled over three weeks by President, Muhammadu Buhari.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had declared that the old denominations would cease to be a legal tender by January 31, 2022 as he explained that the redesigning of the local currency became necessary to tackle inflationary problems, currency counterfeiting, insecurity and other issues plaguing Nigeria.
He further noted that the currency redesign was aimed at controlling currency-in-circulation as well as ransom payments to kidnappers and terrorists.
Visits to banking some halls on Thursday,shies that several bank branches had run out of the small quantities of the new notes allocated to them from their head offices as early as 12 noon.
It was rl revealed that several bank branches were yet to get their new note allocations with explaination by several bank officials
that the new notes were still being expected.
However, some of the centres which still had the new notes said their allocations were very few.
Also, it was also observed that the ATMs at the bank branch were still dispensing only old naira notes.
Customers were also seen depositing the old bills over the counter, while cashiers were paying out more of the old naira notes
It was also observed that the cashiers were seen mixing a few new naira notes with the old bills in their OTC payments.
Meanwhile, in some of the branch visited, some customers snubbed the new notes due to reports that some local traders were rejecting them as legal tender.
As such, some of the bank customers refused to collect the new notes for over-the-counter paymentsq
