Wilson Adekumola
Some commercial banks on Saturday morning were reportedly collecting the old N500 and N1,000 notes from customers despite the order of the Central Bank of Nigeria order.
This came barely 24 hours after the CBN debunked the rumours that it had instructed commercial banks to collect the old N5,00 and N1,000 notes from customers.
Punch Metro reported that Buhari on Thursday ordered the CBN to allow the continued use of the old N200 note alongside its newly redesigned counterpart until April 10, 2023, but maintained that N500 and N1000 notes are no longer legal tenders.
Following this, AmBusiness also reported that Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai on Thursday, after Buhari’s broadcast session, shunned the president’s directive with a counter broadcast by announcing that the old N1,000, N500 and N200 notes remain legal tenders in his state pending the Supreme Court’s verdict.
The broadcast subsequently drew reactions from some state governors including Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje among others, who ordered the use of the old notes pending the Supreme Court judgement on February 22.
Owing to these contradictions, some banks like Ecobank, First Bank, UBA and others who had earlier communicated the brief on the collection of the old notes on Twitter deleted the posts.
Also, in contradiction to the CBN directives, the Cash Return Portal of the CBN directed people with old N500 and old N1,000 notes below N500,000 to their respective commercial bank to make the deposit.
