New Notes Scarcity: CBN unleashes EFCC to branches over allegations of breaches
Fresh angle to the intractable scarcity of new naira notes has emerged. This time, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has opened up and agreed that apart from possible infractions by Money Deposit Banks (MDBs), there are some bad eggs in its quarters after all.
There had been an unproven allegation that commercial banks are currently exchanging large sums of about N20,000,000 with extra N2,000,000 payable to the bank’s branch manager (as bribe), thus leading to hoarding cash and giving it to their preferred customers.
The CBN governor made the allegation at the first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting last week.
Accordingly, the bank’s Governor, Godwin Emefiele has said the CBN has deployed deputy governors and senior staff across its branches in the country to monitor the circulation of the notes.
Aside the presence of deploying top officials of the apex bank, Emefiele added that “Although we have received some reports of breaches by some bank branches, we have agreed with the executive chairmen of the EFCC and ICPC to assist us by sending their staff to all CBN and bank branches to join in monitoring the implementation of this guideline.
“The aim is to ensure compliance with the laid down guideline. We are happy that so far, the exercise achieved a success of 75 per cent of the N2.7trn held outside the banking system. Nigerians in rural areas, our villages, the aged and the vulnerable have had the opportunity to swap their old notes leveraging the agent naira initiative as well as the CBN senior staff sensitisation exercise.
