The Central Bank of Nigeria says it will not extend the January 31st deadline for depositing the old naira note, OduNews reports.
The apex bank disclosed this via its Twitter handle on Friday.
The current series of N200, N500 and N1,000 notes remain legal tender until the deadline of January 31, 2023. pic.twitter.com/WWsem5TpyB
— Central Bank of Nigeria (@cenbank) January 6, 2023
It noted that there will be no timeline extension, “so are advised to ensure they deposit all the N200, N500 and N1,000 Banknotes in their possession before the deadline of January 31, 2023.”
OduNews reports that the national assembly had urged the CBN to extend the deadline for phasing out the old notes till June 30th, 2023.
Findings by OduNews revealed that lenders in many parts of the country were still paying with old notes at a time they were supposed to be receiving old notes and paying with new naira.
More worrisome is the fact that some banks pay an average of N15, 000 as the maximum amount of new naira a customer can withdraw and even force clients to register the withdrawn amount.
The CBN ordered the printing of 500 million pieces of new naira notes in the first contract, which rolled out last week, December 15, 2022, Aisha Ahmad, CBN, deputy governor in charge of financial system stability, told House of Representatives hearing on implementation of CBN cashless policy and the new withdrawal limits, on December 22, 2022.
The CBN on October 26, 2022, announced that higher denominations of the Naira including N200, N500 and N1,000 would be redesigned and introduced into the economy from December 15, 2022, while commercial banks were directed to return existing denominations to the CBN.
The new naira became a legal tender on December 15, 2022, after it was unveiled by President Muhammadu Buhari on November 23, this year.
OduNews had earlier highlighted some security features of the new Naira notes that would help to distinguish between the fake and new notes.
The CBN had also released some security features of the new naira notes. The N1,000 note has 23 features, while N500 and N200 notes have 15 and 10 features respectively.
