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By Chima Nwokoji | Lagos
Bank customers over the weekend besieged bank premises following the assurances by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that cash withdrawal limit has been cancelled and that branches of commercial banks will operate on Saturdays and Sundays.
However, the banks could not live up to their promises because while a few of them had their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) dispensing cash, others simply attended to their customers over the counters. Siting logistics reasons as they needed time to distribute cash, they allowed each customer to withdraw a maximum of N20,000 through the counter and N10,000 from the ATMs on Saturday.
The CBN had earlier confirmed the evacuation of banknotes from its vaults to commercial banks across the country as part of a coordinated effort to ease the circulation of banknotes of various denominations.
As a result of this, most commercial banks sent out notices informing their customers that the weekly limit for cash withdrawal has been revised from N20,000 to N500,000 for individuals and N5,000,000 for corporates. The banks also announced that generation of reference codes for old naira deposits has been discontinued.
The Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department of the CBN, Dr Isa AbdulMumin, on Friday, March 24, stated that a substantial amount of money, in various denominations, had been received by commercial banks for onward circulation to their respective customers.
According to him, the CBN had directed all banks to load their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) as well as conduct physical operations in the banking halls through the weekends.
“Branches of commercial banks will operate on Saturdays and Sundays to attend to customers’ cash needs,” he noted, adding that the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, would personally lead teams to monitor the level of compliance by the banks in various locations across the country.
AbdulMumin, therefore, urged Nigerians to be patient as the current situation would ease soon with the injection of more banknotes into circulation.
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