Redesigned Naira: CBN accuses banks of hoarding new notes

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has accused some commercial banks in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, of refusing to dispense the sum of N4.5 billion redesigned notes allocated to them.

The controller of the CBN branch in Rivers State, Maxwell Okafor, disclosed this on Friday when he led an enforcement team on the newly redesigned notes to some commercial banks and markets in Port Harcourt.

Okafor revealed that the CBN had disbursed about N4.5b of the new naira notes to commercial banks in the state between Thursday and Friday, wondering why many customers were not getting them.

He also expressed concern that some banks in the state were thwarting the CBN’s efforts to enforce the disbursement of the new naira notes by hoarding them in their bank vaults.

“We have been monitoring the dispensing of the new naira note, and the impression we had is not encouraging. We have visited some banks, and one of them was not dispensing the new naira notes,” he said.