CBN not ready for Naira redesign – Gov. Badaru

Jigawa State Governor, Muhammad Badaru Abubakar has tackled the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, over the persistent scarcity of the redesigned Naira notes in commercial banks.

The Governor made the statement through the State commissioner for finance, Babangida Umar Gantsa while reacting to the hardship people are going through to deposit or withdraw their money.

He accused the CBN of withholding the redesigned Naira notes, causing unnecessary hardship on citizens.

“We even spoke with bank managers and they confirmed that the CBN is not giving them enough money.

“One manager of a bank told us that the CBN gave him only N2million.

“In one particular ATM, I counted over 250 people, people are sleeping there and some are spending hours of their work just to withdraw money for their needs. The banks are not loading enough money in their ATMs because the CBN is also not giving them money.

“I think the CBN is not ready for this exercise. They should go back to the drawing board and do the needful to ease the suffering of the common man.”

Babangida added that, “even the naira swap and ten days extension announced by the CBN is going to be defeated.”

Newsmen reports that only ten local governments out of 27 in the State have functional banks.

The rural communities are in untold hardship as they lack access to any financial institution for exchanging their old note with new ones.