New Naira: Pressure Emefiele To Extend Deadline To June, Onanuga Urges Nigerians

The Director Media and Publicity, All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, has urged Nigerians to pressure the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to extend the deadline for the swapping of old naira notes for the redesigned ones till June.

The CBN had extended the January 31 deadline till February 10 after Nigerians from all works of life complained about the unavailability of the new notes which had caused hardship on the country.

Reacting, Onanuga who alleged that the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, may be compromised politically, expressed the fear that the economy may nosedive due to his policy.

He wrote on Facebook, “The agonizing queues for New Naira notes

“CBN governor Godwin Emefiele should take a tour of Abuja ATMs incognito and see first hand how our people are queueing in the harsh sun to draw the new Naira notes from ATM machines. If he does, he will agree that his February 10 deadline, with the 7 days of grace is not enough for the swapping of the old and new notes. He himself had painted the enormity of the problem: out of over N3 trillion in circulation, only N500 billion is in bank vaults. The rest is with Nigerian traders and individuals, who are eager to have the new notes.

“Many transactions could no longer take place because people are not taking the old notes and people also don’t have the new notes.

“ATMs are jammed with people. Technology is creating bigger mess as networks are not functioning well. Transfers online are also becoming problematic. The banks blame network dysfunction. I will not be surprised if the economy takes a dip this month and the next month over this currency problem.

“It took some serious pressure to make Emefiele yield ground on his initial 31 January deadline. Nigerians need to mount more pressure to make this politically-exposed CBN governor to allow the swapping of the notes possible till at least June.”