By midnight of 31st January 2023, the old 200, 500 and 1000 Naira notes will only be good in the archives as the newly redesigned currency ought to have achieved full circulation by then.
However, as the countdown continues, Nigerians are finding out that all is not going as smoothly as expected.
The banks are still dispensing the old Naira notes, sometimes deliberately mixing them up with the new ones.
Indeed, these are interesting times as Nigerians keep watching the unfolding drama.
With just days to the scrapping of the old notes, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has stepped up advocacy by meeting the people, encouraging them to accept the new Naira notes, identifying and taking down issues raised by the people as well as removing sundry bottlenecks created by unscrupulous persons.
Available information indicates that the CBN is unhappy with a number of Commercial Banks which have been given the new currency to dispense to Nigerians.
Some people insist that the Banks are working on a script to undo the planned achievement of CBN by stalling the calculation in the hope that the apex bank extend the window of grace for the exchange.
Another school of thought believes that certain persons have been collecting the new Naira notes in equal exchange for the old ones they deposited, thereby circumventing the CBN plan and creating a scarcity of the new ones.
While CBN insists that it has made the currency available, the Banks are taking their time providing it in their Automated Teller Machines, ATM.
At parties, money changers display bundles of the new currencies which are yet to circulate properly.
Most people believe that some Commercial Banks are making profits from the process rather than helping out.
That is why the new directive by CBN that the new Naira notes be dispensed through the ATMs needs to be well monitored and enforced.
The average Nigerian does not need to withdraw the weekly ceiling of five hundred thousand Naira and also does not have such a huge amount of money to spend weekly hence his or her interest should be paramount in the ongoing change of Nigeria’s currency to the new one.
It will be a sad loss to the ordinary Nigerian who may lose his hard-earned 1000, 500, or 200 Naira note by the first day of February 2023 just because some persons somewhere out of mischief stalled in helping them change their money to the new notes.
