The Senate on Tuesday reiterated the need for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to extend the January 31st deadline for old banknotes’ withdrawal to July 31st, 2023.
The upper Legislative chamber of the National Assembly adopted this resolution during the day’s plenary session presided over by Senate President, Senator Ahmad Lawan.
It stressed that it was necessary to extend the deadline in view of current constraints in the circulation of the new Naira notes, advising the CBN to improve the circulation of the new banknotes nationwide.
The lawmakers justified the resolution on the fact that after thoroughly appraising the implementation of the policy directive of the apex bank on the withdrawal of old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes from circulation it was glaring that sticking to the deadline would hurt the economy and ordinary Nigerians.
The Senate, therefore, resolved that the apex bank governor “should immediately extend the use of the old notes by six months from January 31st to July 31st 2023 with immediate effect.
“The Governor should compel banks to open an exchange window where people who don’t have a bank account can exchange their old notes with the new note”, it added.
In his contribution during plenary, the Senate President maintained that the shift in the deadline would help the apex bank to consolidate on the modest achievements recorded so far in its financial inclusion drive..
The lawmaker further clarified: “In most parts of Nigeria, there are no banks and our people transact in cash more often than not. There is no doubt that we must have a policy of inclusion in getting our people who have no banks available to them and the CBN can have a special program for that.
“We must have policies by the CBN to ensure that we have branches of banks established more in our rural areas”, Lawan added.
