The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will be keeping an eye on commercial banks to make sure they follow the mandate to load the newly designed naira notes in automated teller machines as instructed by CBN.
The CBN Director, Ahmed Umar disclosed this at a training session for state directors of the National Orientation Agency in Abuja on Monday.
According to Umar, the CBN was instructed to carry out the deadline withdrawal of the circulating old naira notes by January 31.
“We want to use this training session to pass a message that CBN has enough currency notes to go round the general public.
“We, CBN management, have mandated banks to stop putting old notes in their ATM machines. They should only put the new notes.
“And there is serialisation of the policy that they can put either N500, N1000 or N200 notes whichever the denomination they have or combination of any of these notes, they should just put the new notes in their machines.
“We are going to monitor to ensure that the banks comply and if they don’t, we have penalty for non compliance,” the apex bank director said.
According to him, in many countries of the world, it takes few years to change a currency note design.
“In our own case what we had was basically over 20 years of having the same design of note.
“Over that period, what it did to us was to create avenue for some people to master the act of counterfeiting the note.
“In our own case, what we have is the minimum of 17 years or more for us to redesign our currency.
“If you notice N1,000 note that was introduced in 2005, it took 17 years for us to redesign it. N500 and N200 notes were also redesigned after 21 years and 22 years respectively.
“So, if currency notes stay too long in the system, there is tendency that people who counterfeit make a lot of efforts to produce the same notes.
“So, that is why there is need to change our notes regularly.”
According to him, another reason for the redesign was that N500 and N1,000 constitute 99 per cent of the currency notes that are being targeted for counterfeiting.
“It is simple logic, the effort you put to counterfeit N1,000 is the same effort you put to counterfeit N5.
“So, why will they waste their energy doing small note? They always target the higher note particularly N1,000 because of the value attached to it,” he said.
Earlier, Dr. Garba Abari, the Director-General of NOA, stated that his agency collaborated with the CBN to train NOA employees in the 774 local government areas in order to help inform Nigerians about the redesign of the new banknotes policy.
Abari expressed the hope that the training will significantly help clear up misunderstandings about the new currency notes policy.
He urged every participant to pay close attention to the training in order to properly represent CBN when beginning grassroots enlightenment initiatives.
