CBN discovers N4m in Ogun, beats commercial banks

The Central Bank of Nigeria said on Tuesday it has discovered N4 million in new naira notes mismanaged by a commercial bank in Ogun state.

It also accused commercial banks of sabotaging the CBN’s efforts to make the new naira notes available.

The deputy director of the Banking Supervision Department, CBN Lagos, Kayode Makinde, revealed this to journalists on Tuesday as he led a team during the monitoring exercise in Ogun.

Makinde said this week would be the third week of the monitoring exercise in the state in an effort to ensure compliance with the CBN’s guidelines regarding the issuance of new banknotes.

He said that the CBN should not be blamed for the scarcity of new naira notes, but the commercial banks.

He disclosed that the team found that a commercial bank had mishandled new naira notes, adding that the bank involved and its officers will be appropriately sanctioned.

“This is the third week in which we ensure strict implementation of our guideline regarding the issuance of new banknotes. We have banks, agents and super agents circulating new notes in the economy. The experience was mixed, we saw some trying to hoard new notes, we forced them to upload to ATMs, others had poor cash management.

“Our experience is that not CBN but commercial banks should be blamed for scarcity. We caught some of them, with new notes in their safes, we forced them to upload to their machines. We told them that instead of trying to ration, upload the ones you have and contact your central cash management unit who has direct access to CBN.

“We have encountered cases of operator sabotage, we will take up the matter and deal with it appropriately.

“We indicated that they are not allowed to pay out new notes through the counter, but other notes, some did that and ran out of cash. Some affiliates deploy resourceful cash management skills and never run out of cash, while others experienced run out of cash and are still waiting for their source.

“We encountered one of them who could not account for nearly four million naira in new notes and appropriate sanctions will be imposed against them,” Makinde said.

Makinde further said that two teams were dispatched on each day of the monitoring exercise to cover two senatorial districts.

He added that using super agents to exchange old notes for new notes had been very effective in the state.