President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the Central Bank of Nigeria’s request for the extension of the deadline for swapping of old Naira notes to the redesigned ones.
The new deadline is February 10th, 2023.
A seven-day grace period, beginning on February 10 to February 17, 2023, has also been approved to enable Nigerians to deposit their old notes at the CBN after the February deadline when the old currency would have lost its Legal Tender status.
The President gave the approval on Sunday during a meeting with the apex bank’s governor, Godwin Emefiele, in his country home in Daura, Katsina State.
Briefing journalists after the meeting, Emefiele stated that 75 percent of the N2.7 trillion held outside the banking system has been recovered.
“I would like to continue to thank Mr. President for giving the CBN the approval to embark on this ambitious programme because like I had said in the past, the Central Bank of Nigeria has not had the opportunity to embark on such a currency resigned programme in the last 19 years,” Emefiele said.
“And indeed, let me emphasize that only an incorruptible leader of the president’s stature can give such approval to the CBN.
“Ladies and gentlemen, from the onset of this currency redesign programme, we made it clear that for 19 years the CBN hasn’t been able to conduct this important aspect of its mandate, whereas they should normally have been done within a 5–8-year window.
“Our aim mainly is to make our monetary policy decisions more applicable and as you can see, we started to see inflation trending downwards and exchange relatively stable.”
