The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele has said the new naira notes have now arrived the banks and ate being dispensed to their branches nationwide.
The CBN Governor stated this on Thursday in Daura when he went to brief President Muhammadu Buhari on the activities and policies of the apex bank..
He also said the CBN has mopped up over N1 trillion from the over N2.7 trillion circulating outside of the banking space..
He also said every village in Nigeria has access to financial services thus, they won’t be negatively impacted with the policy.
“When we announced it, we said December 15th, is when we will issue the cash. But we have to move it forward. The president unveiled the new notes on November 28. The banks received the notes yesterday, (December 5th), and they have started dispensing them” he said.
On the moping naira notes outside of the banks he said “at the CBN, we have taken back more than N500bn worth of naira notes and the banks have also done about N500bn.”
He said Nigeria has sufficient payment system infrastructure to support a full cashless economy which began in 2012.
“It’s important for me to say that the policy started in 2012, but for about three or four times, we had to step down the policy because we felt we had to deepen the payment system infrastructure in Nigeria. Between 2012 and 2022, it is about ten years, we believe that a lot of electronic channels have been put in place that will aid people in conducting financial transactions in Nigeria” he said.
“We hear people complaining about the people in rural areas. While i was coming to Daura, I saw a kiosk of a super agent. We have 1.4 million super agents accross the country, in all local governments and all villages in this country.
Having super agents, which is different from the banks, it shows we have 1.4 million points where people can conduct banking services. And we think Nigeria as a big economy in Africa needs to leapfrog into the cashless economy. We cannot continue to allow a situation where 85 perceht in circulation is outside of the banks” he stated.
On the call by the Senate for briefing in cashless policy he said from time to time we brief the National Assembly on what is happening about our policies. I understand the Senate has asked for briefing and we will brief them.
He said the policy is not targeted at anybody but for the good of the economy.
He also said there are opportunities for further review, if need be.
“We will review the policy from to time but we won’t reverse or change the timing. But if its about tweaking the amount, higher or lower, we will do so to make life better. The CBN is monitoring what is happening and we will do what is right” he said..
