Emefiele bows to pressure, says commercial banks will accept old notes after February 10

The CBN governor also apologised to lawmakers for refusing to answer their previous summons.

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele has assured Nigerians that commercial banks will still accept old naira notes from customers even after the February 10 deadline.

Emefiele said this on Tuesday while appearing before the House of Representatives committee concerning the CBN naira redesign policy.

January 31st was the initial date set by the CBN to finally discard old naira notes, but after a lot of pressure from lawmakers, Emefiele decided to finally extend the deadline date.

Before the deadline date was extended, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila accused the CBN governor of breaching Section 20 of the CBN Act.

According to him, the section mandates commercial banks to accept old notes even after the deadline has elapsed.

“After the expiration date, such naira notes changed will no longer be legal tender but it also says that even five months, three months, or two months after, even in June, all the old notes presented to the bank shall be redeemed by the bank,” Gbajabiamila said.

While speaking with the committee, the CBN governor agreed with the speaker on this Section of the Act.

“Section 20 says even after the old currency has lost its legal tender status that we are mandated to collect that money. And I stand with the House of Reps on this”, Emefiele said.

“If you have your money that you have not been able to send to the bank. We will certainly give you the opportunity to bring them back into the CBN to redeem it. Either you pay it to your bank account or you want to do an exchange — we give you. You will not lose your money. This is the assurance I give to Nigerians.”

He also apologised to the committee for not responding to their recent summons.