Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, has insisted that the February 10 deadline for the circulation of old naira notes stands.
Emefiele stated this while briefing the diplomatic community at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja on Tuesday.
“The situation is substantially calming down since the commencement of over-the-counter payments to complement ATM disbursements and the use of super-agents. There is, therefore, no need to consider any shift from the deadline of February 10,” he said.
The CBN governor made the clarification against the backdrop of the confusion over the Supreme Court order extending the deadline to February 15, pending the hearing by the court.
On Monday and Tuesday, Nigerians were thrown into confusion as commercial banks refused to accept the old notes at their branches.
Emefiele, however, further said, “Some of our leaders are buying the new notes and storing them for whatever purpose and I will not expand further on that.”
He said the apex bank acknowledged the suffering of Nigerians, noting that effective implementation of the policy could scrap 4% of the inflation numbers.
The CBN governor added that the optimal volume of cash in circulation should be around N700billion.
Emefiele said, “Even if we say N1trillion should be in circulation, we cannot refloat N3.7trillion into circulation.”