By Umar Suleiman
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday said it will redesign the N200, N500, and N1,000 notes.
CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, disclosed this during a special press briefing in Abuja. The new design and issues will be effective from December 15, 2022.
The action was taken in order to take control of the currency in circulation, according to the CBN boss.
Consequently, Nigeria will no longer accept existing N200, N500, and N1000 denominations of the Naira from January 31,2023.
Their replacements will come December this year with different designs of the N200, N500, and N1000 denominations.
The apex bank, Emefiele stated, has secured the approval of President Muhammadu Buhari to roll out new notes to replace the existing currency in circulation.
Once the new notes are designed Nigerians are expected to take old notes to banks for the new notes.
The CBN Governor is also concerned about how Nigerian currency is being stored currently.
According to him, the bulk of the nation’s currency notes was outside bank vaults and the CBN would not allow the situation to continue.
“To be more specific, as of the end of September 2022, available data at the CBN indicates that N2.7 trillion out of the N3.3 trillion currency in circulation was outside the vault of commercial banks across the country and supposedly held by members of the public,” he said.
“Evidently, currency in circulation has more than doubled since 2015, rising from N1.46 trillion in December 2015 to N3.2 trillion as of September 2022. I must say that this is a worrisome trend that must not be continued to be allowed.”
According to him, the initiative by the CBN will help address some of the nation’s security threats, especially kidnapping and terrorism.
He believes that terrorists and kidnappers capitalise on the large excess of money to carry out their nefarious activities.
