1- GOVERNOR SOLUDO: SPECIAL PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

1. Commercial banks have been directed by the Central Bank to dispense old currency notes and to also receive same as deposits from customers.

2- Tellers at commercial banks are to generate the codes for deposits and there is no limit to the number of times an individual or company can make deposits.

The Governor of the CBN gave the directive at a Bankers’ Committee meeting held on Sunday, 12th March 2023.

3- The Governor, Emefiele, personally confirmed the above to me during a phone conversation on Sunday night. Residents of Anambra are therefore advised to freely accept and transact their businesses with the old currency notes (N200; N500; and N1,000) as well as the new notes.

4- Residents should report any bank that refuses to accept deposits of the old notes. Anambra State Government will not only report such a bank to the CBN, but will also immediately shut down the defaulting branch.

Signed
C. C. Soludo CFR.
Governor

SANWO-OLU: OLD NAIRA NOTES REMAIN LEGAL TENDER

The Lagos State Government has noted the hardship sparked by the Naira redesign policy, which has affected business and commercial activities.

There is no reason to reject the old notes, going by the Supreme Court judgement delivered on March 3, 2023.

The apex court declared that “no reasonable notice was given as required by Section 20(3) of the CBN Act,” noting that the public only became aware of the policy through press remarks, which cannot qualify as a notice to the public.

The court maintained that the policy has impeded the functions of State governments, pointing out that the directive that stops the use of the old notes is illegal, unconstitutional, null and void.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has, therefore, called on business owners, especially retailers, to accept the old N500 and N1,000 notes - in line with the Supreme Court judgement that the currency remains legal tender until December 31, 2023. It is illegal to reject the notes.

All agencies of the Lagos State Government are advised not to reject payments made with the old currency by the public.

Gbenga Omotoso
HC, Information & Strategy

EDITORIAL: CBN, the rule of law and Nigerian democracy

If we took the CBN’s main price stability remit as our point of departure, Mr Emefiele’s incompetence is incontrovertible.

By Premium Times March 11, 2023

“The rule of law upon which our democratic governance is founded becomes illusory if the President of the country or any authority or person refuses to obey the orders of courts,” thus proclaimed Justice Emmanuel Agim, delivering the lead judgment in the case brought by three state governments – Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara – against the federal government at the Supreme Court, seeking an order invalidating the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) recent banknotes redesign. Expressing the Supreme Court’s unfamiliarity with “any law which empowers a bank to withhold a customer’s money and refuse…to give him/her”, the lead judgment extended the validity of the old naira notes until 31 December, ordering that they remain legal tender alongside the new notes, up until the newer deadline.

Very few Nigerians required the Supreme Court to remind them that “The (CBN’s) directive on (cash) withdrawal limit is an infringement of people’s rights”. And most have had to live with a frightening range of infringements since the banknotes swap policy came into effect. These have ranged from the economic (loss of earnings platforms across the economy’s informal sector), through the emotional (having to beg for cash from friends, family, neighbours and strangers to meet basic needs) to the conceptual (just struggling to make sense of the policy’s design, implementation and expected outcomes).

Yet, in a young democracy, the violation of the people’s rights is the more telling concern, especially at this stage in the election cycle, when the end-of-cycle polls doubles as the Republic’s affirmation of faith in what US President Abraham Lincoln described in The Gettysburg Address as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. If our democracy is not to perish, it will matter too that acts of disdain for the laws of the land, a charge directed by the Supreme Court at Presidential Muhammadu Buhari, be as rare as the trampling on by government of the people’s rights.

The CBN’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling is disturbing for precisely this reason. Not only has its governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele failed to offer a path towards implementing the apex court’s ruling, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the apex bank has acted to instruct deposit money banks to accept and dispense the old naira notes. In consequence, the ugly spectacle of bank customers queuing at bank branches in the wee hours of the morning in the increasingly forlorn hope that they might obtain some cash remains.

Mr Godwin Emefiele continues to offer a signal lesson in disdain for the mores and laws of the land. Whether it was his earlier bid to be president, or his decision to be in contempt of the Supreme Court. Bank chief executives, on the other hand, have failed to cover themselves in glory from the start of this saga. It will help to understand why they were unable to disprove the earlier malarkey where the CBN attributed the scarcity of cash to their unethical practices, rather than its failure to supply the system with enough new banknotes. But nothing can excuse their acquiescence in the CBN’s rule-breaking behaviour.

PREMIUM TIMES believes that the role of the industry regulator, even in a sector as important as financial services, is not analogous to that of a school principal, or of a regimental sergeant major in the army. The requirement to obey lawful orders should have our banks complying with the CBN’s decision, as soon as this was made. Along with Mr Godwin Emefiele, therefore, Nigerian banks’ chief executives have been responsible for inflicting pains on domestic economic actors that have continued to hurt the economy, while in the recent case, acting in gross contempt of the country’s laws.

It is in the nature of these contemnors of the laws of the land, that the respective shareholders of the businesses they head should act to bring them to book. We cannot build a democracy where scofflaws run the financial services space.

PREMIUM TIMES has made several calls for Mr Emefiele to be relieved of his office. These calls were premised on growing doubt as to his fitness for office. If we took the CBN’s main price stability remit as our point of departure, Mr Emefiele’s incompetence is incontrovertible. This is as much about the outcomes of his policy, and as the Supreme Court’s ruling points to, as it is about the thoughtlessness that goes into his policy design. However, rule breaking is why we would want Mr Emefiele to be arrested and tried. We cannot build a democracy on the back of impunity and illegality. But there is also the charge of economic sabotage.

If the first is criminal. The second is treasonous.

Alas, President Buhari, himself a scofflaw, as noted by the Supreme Court, is neither able nor willing to do right by the country on this matter. This will be the legacy of his eight-year rule. But we cannot continue to allow acts of criminal conduct to define our democracy.

FoolaniHellman:
Oh so no be Tinubu dey suffer for this cashless policy

Damn, Igbos are doomed

FoolaniHellman:


Your weeping shall know no end

Were you pigs not in support of the Cashless policy simply because of your Hatred for Tinubu...

Go and continue to suffer for the policy y'all praise Buhari for!
As if the policy is not affecting your people, always talking nonsense
Bozo

Nelz7:
Dear Emefiele,

Its time to come down
You've fought a good fight
ur Boss who led u on all along betrayed u along d way.
That's a typical of this administration
It always falter to decieve
Let it rest. Somehow, U did achieve something shaa as
Last pool election wasn't rigged at d pooling unit.
U forced riggers to do a very bad Job of it.
To this I say a very Big thanks to you.
It is time to go unto other things.

Yours Faithfull
Obidient Nigerian