Agony continued to be the lot of many Nigerians on Monday as they were unable to access their money due to the naira redesigning and currency swap of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
One of them is an elderly man seen weeping inside the banking hall of one of the commercial banks, as seen in a viral video.
The elderly man who spoke in the Yoruba language said he needed to access cash in order to buy drugs.
“All I want is money to buy my drugs and also get food to eat. The person that sells drugs for me said I must bring cash, and I have money in the bank but can’t access it,” he said while weeping in the footage posted on The cable.ng.
In many parts of the country, commercial banks are rejecting old naira notes while they have little or no new ones to offer those who want t withdraw money.
This is in spite of the Supreme Court’s order that the old notes remain valid, and the CBN Governor’s statement that the banks should at least continue to collect such from customers even if it was no more a legal tender.
As ‘The Punch’ reports, efforts to get a response from the CBN through its Director of Corporate Communications, Osita Nwanisobi, were futile. When contacted by our correspondent on Monday through a phone call, he asked our correspondent to text him instead. However, he never acknowledged nor responded to the text.
Meanwhile, the CBN has said that over N2tn old notes had been deposited by bank customers since it began the cash swap programme.
It was said that it had only been able to print between N300bn and N400bn of the redesigned notes.
