Talk of the Nigerian naira redesign is no longer news to all in the West African country
The Central Bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, made this in an official press release in October 26th, 2022.
It was mentioned that the currencies to be redesigned is the N200, N500 and the N1,000 notes.
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The new redesigned notes would go into circulation by December 15th 2022, and would serve as legal tender alongside the old notes.
While the old notes would stop being legal tender by January 31st, 2023.
Why is this important?
About 2.73 trillion out of the 3.23 trillion currency in circulation as at September, 2022 was outside the vaults of commercial banks in the country.
That is 85% of cash in circulation, which is what the CBN governor tags ‘significant hoarding’.
No economy in the world can survive such a percentage of money in circulation being outside the bank vaults.
What is the role of commercial banks?
Now, commercial banks have a huge role to play in all of this. Customers can not go to Central Bank to make deposits or withdrawals.
It is in lieu of this, that commercial banks will now open from Monday till Saturdays within this period. When I say commercial banks, I mean the UBA, Access, First Bank, Stanbic IBTC, etc.
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Also, the CBN has waived the charge for excess cash deposit. So now, Nigerians can now go into banks and deposit as much as they want to, and there would be no charge.
It is important you note that…
It is important to note that the standard practice globally is for central banks to redesign, produce and circulate new local legal tender every 5 to 8 years.
The CBN waited for 20 years to carry out this design.
You should also discard rumors of N2,000 and N5,000 notes and be informed that there would be no change as all inscription on the old notes remain same as this new one.
Is Detty December still possible?
With this new naira redesign, cash will really be scarce during the Yuletide season.
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A lot of Nigerians too, who are scared of being monitored by anti graft agencies, would rather change their naira to dollar and keep.
This is already affecting dollar to naira rate
On the bright side,
This would reduce kidnapping and terrorism, because if you observe, you would know that most kidnap and terrorism cases, ransoms are paid in cash.
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