The Central Bank of Nigeria CBN has declared the old naira notes illegal in Nigeria from 10th of February, 2023.
This declaration was pronounced by the branch controller of the CBN, Bauchi, Haladu Idris while addressing the media at the Bauchi branch.
In his statement he expressed, “In the last 24hours, we have been inundated by questions from various angles of general public about our operational guidelines on the old currency notes, be that as it may, there are many questions here and there which people has been asking about.
According to him, “So for the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state categorically that CBN is ready and is opened to receive all of those old notes based on certain conditions and criteria.
“Customers are free to come to the bank and deposit which they cannot do at a commercial bank anymore because the currency have seized to be a legal tender since the 10th of this month.
“The customer has to go to the CBN portal and fill a form in the portal, there will be a form there concerning this redesign and exchange”.
“You generate a code and either print it out or come with your phone to give us the code and information there in. In the form you are expected to give us all personal information about yourself, account details and the amount to deposit.
By the time you have done all this correctly then you come to CBN where the code will be accepted from you as well as the money, process and confirm the genuineness or otherwise of the money to avoid receiving fake notes because there are some fake notes in circulation now”.
He also warned that, “If anyone want to try us by bringing fake notes, he should be ready to be arrested so don’t go and print old fake notes and bring to CBN, whatever happens to you, don’t blame us, you caused it yourself”.
He assured that, “We will receive the money from you and do our internal checks before we give you an acknowledgement which is evidence to show that we have collected the amount from you and we go ahead with our internal processes, after finishing with our internal processes, we now hit your account and credit it through your commercial bank.
“All the commercial banks are expected to bring all old notes deposited to us and we will collect, that is final. Some of the banks has started depositing with us because they want to close their books, as soon as they do that they will not collect from customers again, that is the reason that is the reason CBN open this portal for the general public especially the vulnerable who are still having problems of cash used for trading and now that the deadline has expired, they need to deposit their money.
“The CBN is trying to minimise risk involved in loosing their money, we are trying to minimise hardship also, we know people are having some hardship, people are suffering, we are not unmindful of that, that is why the management of CBN has magnonimously decided to open that portal to assist those who were unable to deposit the money into their bank, that is our process flow in a nutshell.
“The portal will be there, open for sometime depending on the circumstances and directives of the management, we expect that within this period, people should have been able to deposit all they have, it is a privilege given to Nigerians to ensure they deposit all that money even though they are no longer legal tender.
“For people in the remote areas, if you can recollect we have gone round virtually all the villages in Bauchi with some commercial banks asking the people to open accounts which many of them did and were able to deposit money, I doubt if there are still people who have not keyed into the system now who are still having old money.
“We used the media, NOA and traditional rulers just to let people know, no limit to the amount that can be deposited provided the form is properly filled….