The Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum, has threatened to revoke the property rights of any bank that refuses residents of the state new naira notes.
Zulum issued the warning after visiting ten Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) across the state on Friday and finding them bare of cash while large queues of people waited to withdraw money.
According to the state governor, only banks with legitimate reasons for not releasing the notes will be spared.
Recall that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced on December 15, 2022, that the old N200, N500, and N1000 notes will no longer be accepted as legal tender as of January 31, 2023.
On Saturday afternoon, Zulum wrote a comment on his social media page expressing his dismay at the sight of hundreds of people standing in line at a bank branch while just one out of ten ATMs were dispensing cash.
He said “Only those with less privilege are lined up, as you can see. Nobody wealthy caught my eye here. There are reportedly a lot of people here as of 3am. Some people were unable to even eat. Commercial activity in the state are suffering as a result of the lack of the new naira note and even the older ones. People are in pain, Zulum lamented.
“We recently paid out wages totaling over N5 billion, and the banks are cash-strapped, he continued. A few of the ATMs are broken. The CBN policy and withdrawal cap are both acceptable to us. Why can’t everyone have access to that N20,000, notwithstanding their claims that people could only withdraw N20,000?”
He claimed to be in Gubio, a town of over 70,000 people, but he claimed that finding N100,000 inside the local government was tough.
The fact that neither the new nor the old notes were available for people to collect saddened the governor.
People were in need of money, he said, and “some wicked affluent people are coming to rural places to abuse poor people.” A ram worth N100,000 was being sold for N35,000 instead.
The Governor requested that the CBN make replacement notes available at commercial banks so that citizens can access their money.
In response to pleas and protests from Nigerians, the apex bank extended the deadline till February 10 and indicated that anyone who still possessed old notes could give them to the bank to exchange for new ones or save them after the window.
Despite the extension of the deadline, the currency exchange has impacted many people, homes, and businesses in a variety of ways just three weeks before the 2023 general elections.
The situation has gotten worse as a result of POS operators charging up to ten times what they used to charge customers.
Findings by Quest Times show that several people rushed to the bank to deposit their old notes before the initial deadline. However, getting even a small percentage of what they stored in new notes has been impossible.