Nigerians lose over N1tn to painful PoS charges as notes scarcity dry economy
In the last two to three weeks of unprecedented scarcity of both old and new naira notes, investigations by Business Hilights nationwide have revealed that ordinary Nigerians have spent well over N1tn in buying Nigerian naira from Point of Sale (PoS) operators.
Findings show that due to the scarcity even in commercial banks, PoS operators have resorted to going the extra miles of buying currencies from petrol attendants, bus/taxi drivers, restaurants, supermarkets and mega shops that deal on small household items and sell the cash at humongous amounts to mainly family owners who cannot afford to see their children starve due to lack of cash.
Further checks show that in the beginning, they sell about N10,000 for about N500, but in the last two weeks, N10,000 either old or new notes go for as high as N3,000.
Though the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had warned PoS against charging more than N200, the operators say they charge higher than CBN rate because they go the extra mile to access the cash.
Some of the PoS operators told our correspondents that even as high as high they charge, the cash they were able to secure for sale do not last till about 2:00PM in the day due to many are in need of cash to run their families.
In our calculation, investigations show that every six out of 10 Nigerians adults have parted high amount buying either old or new notes from PoS operators, thus indicating that at average, over 50 million Nigerians have bought cash from PoS recently at a very exorbitant rate leading to well over N1tn loss by ordinary Nigerians.
Meanwhile the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday, debunked the news circulating in the media that President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the reissuance of the old N500 and N1000 notes as legal tenders via a tweet by his wife, Aisha.
Describing the rumor as a “fake press release”, the statement signed on Tuesday by Edward L. Adamu, Deputy Governor, Corporate Service and Osita Nwanisobi director, Corporate Communications of the CBN noted that it is sticking to presidential directive to reissue only N200 old banknotes.
“For the avoidance of doubt,” the statement read, “the Central Bank of Nigeria reiterates that in line with the directives of Mr. President, only N200 old notes are to be reissued and to circulate concurrently with the new notes.”
The CBN therefore urged the members of the public “to ignore this fake news”, noting that it is “working with the law enforcement agencies to investigate, apprehend and prosecute the purveyors of this fake news”
Mrs. Aisha Buhari has since came out to claim that her tweeter account was compromised leading to the circulation of the fake news.
