In view of the disputes surrounding the insufficiency of redesigned Naira notes, a combined team from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Independent Corrupt Practices (ICPC) has started the monitoring of circulation of the new notes in Abuja.
The combined team which started the on-the-spot checkup on Tuesday, continued with the exercise yesterday, visiting fuel stations, supermarkets and Point of Sale (PoS) operators in the FCT.
The objective is to curb hoarding of the currency notes, a situation that has largely caused insufficiency of the notes in Abuja.
There had been reports that utmost fuel stations were selling the redesigned notes–N200, N500 and N1000 to PoS operators, resulting in excessive charges by the agent bankers.
The managing director of Nirsal Microfinance Bank, Abubakar Kure who lead the team on checkup to various parts of the FCT, said it became necessary for the apex bank to conduct the monitoring exercise based on complaints from banks that most of their customers weren’t making cash deposit presently, pointing to the fact that their bigger customers are oil service stations and super markets.
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We want to actually establish this fact if there’s possibility of cash sale between the Point of Sales and the Oil services stations as claimed and what happed to the cash they’ve collected.
But what we’ve seen then, there’s important advancement from what we observed the previous day, that there are much sale via pos and transfer, Mr Kure said in an exclusive interview with our correspondent.
The Nirsal MFB MD said cash transactions are very minimum and for some we see records of their transferring this money from banks, depositing others because there’s minimum cash sales. The little they get, they use the cash for their day to day sale for the stations or service workers.
The only complaints we got from them is that some times their transactions are down due to network issues. When POS are down, customers will be stranded unable to pay their transactions so they endure so major decline in the process.
They appeal and we’re also appealing to Banks to enhance their network facilities as to also help to achieve this objective of cashless policy so that people will be used to electronic transaction or paying through electronic services.
He encouraged them to open bank accounts for their customers, while also advising Nigerians not to hoard the old notes, with a promise to make the notes more available.
Speaking with one of the filling stations supervisor, Shafa Maizube opposite Dunamis Church in Lugbe area, Saeed Yusuf said utmost of their customers haven’t been forthcoming with cash since the Naira redesign policy.
He said most transactions are now done through mobile transfers or customers paying through point of sales machines, which he said has also declined.
According to him, if banks could upgrade on their networks and transfer are made at ease, the policy will be a welcomed development.
