President Muhammadu Buhari has unveiled the redesigned naira notes of N200, N500 and N1000 at the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa Abuja on Wednesday.
The unveiling of the naira notes preceded the virtual meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) with a number of cabinet members in attendance. The unveiling of the new redesigned notes hitherto slated for Dec. 15 was brought forward to Wednesday by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, who announced the shifting of the date on Tuesday at a media briefing to mark the end of the 288th Monetary Policy Committee meeting and the last in 2022, urged those in possession of the old notes to hurriedly deposit them at the nearest bank branch.
This, he said, would enable them to beat the Jan. 31, 2023 deadline to dispose of the old notes.
Speaking at the presentation the CBN governor stated in his speech: “In recent times, however, currency management in Nigeria has faced several challenges that have continued to grow in scale and sophistication with unintended consequences for the integrity of both the CBN and the country. Some of these challenges primarily include:
“First, a significant hoarding of banknotes by members of the public, with statistics showing that N2.72 trillion out of the N3.26 trillion currency in circulation as of June 2022 was outside the vaults of commercial banks across the country, and supposedly held by members of the public. This statistic shows that 84.71 percent of the currency in circulation are outside commercial banks’ vaults, with only 15.29 percent in the Central Bank and Commercial banks’ vaults.
“Second, is the worsening shortage of clean and fit banknotes with an attendant negative perception of the CBN and increased risk to financial stability;
“Third, there is increasing ease by criminals and risk of counterfeiting evidenced by several security reports received at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“The benefits of the currency redesign to the Nigerian economy are enormous given that:
“This policy will help to control inflation as the exercise will bring the hoarded currency into the banking system, thereby making monetary policy more effective;
“It will also help with better design and implementation of Monetary Policy as we would have much more accurate data on money supply and monetary aggregate.”
