Commercial Banks have countered claims by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the availability of the new Naira notes.
Defending their position Friday on the scarcity of the new Naira notes and the 31 st January deadline before the House adhoc committee investigating the matter, the bank Chiefs separately told the committee that the new naira notes they received from the CBN was inadequate to cater to the news of its customers
An official of Access Bank,Hadiza Ambursa who represented the bank’s managing director, said they only got 10 percent of the money deposited with the CBN.
“We are not getting the money as quickly as we want them. We only get 10 percent of the money deposited. We are paying and collecting money. We are also loading our ATM.”
For Jimoh Garuba, the representative of Sterling Bank, the bank receives allocation weekly from CBN but had no sufficient fund to meet its customers’ demand.
“As we speak, our Automated Teller Machine (ATM) is dispensing what we received which fluctuates most time,”
He said his bank receives a minimum of N150 million from the CBN weekly to be shared among its branches in Abuja and received N150 million weekly in Kaduna for its branches in the 36 states.
”We received N100 million weekly and we can only dispense through ATM and not through the counter.
“If we are to go through the counter to dispense the money, the allocation will go down in less than 10 minutes,” Garuba said
The bank official said the percentage of money received from the CBN varies on weekly basis, adding that it received 80 percent of what it deposited in Abuja and less than 10 percent in Kano.
He blamed the shortage of the new Naira notes in circulation on the CBN cashless policy.
On his part,Arerepade Akagwe, the representative of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), said the bank had taken 70 percent of the old money it deposited with the CBN.
In his remarks, the Chairman of the committee, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, said that the exercise was not a witch hunt but for purpose of fact-finding .
