Naira notes: NASS leaders to meet Buhari, reps threaten Emefiele with arrest warrant

The leadership of the National Assembly is expected to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari to resolve the crisis following the implementation/deadline of the new cash withdrawal limit policy and currency exchange policy species.

The President, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, who revealed it at the end of Thursday's plenary, also promised that the House, when plenary resumed next Tuesday, would invoke the provisions of Article 89 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to compel the appearance of CBN officials before the House, in accordance with its resolution.

The President said, "As we said earlier this morning, I am compelled and I will restrain myself on Tuesday when we resume invoking the provisions of Section 89 of the Constitution.

"Because you remember the CBN summons just a motion to clarify a loophole to know where the problem lies, while on one line the bankers say they don't have enough new tickets to distribute to the public. On the other hand, regulator CBN says yes, they do and they have distributed enough notes to distribute to the public.

“Somewhere in there is the truth and what we have sought to look at is what to do about it and how can we get the money to the public.

The president was very clear, the president gave his approval based on what he knows and what he was told. We all know the President is a man of the people, he gave his approval based on what he was told.

But what we are saying or what the motion is saying is that after the approval of the president, how does the money get to the people? Money doesn't get to people and that's why we searched and that's exactly what we're going to do. So on Tuesday, as I said earlier, this Assembly will follow its own procedure and invoke the provisions of Article 89 to compel the presence of the CBN and its directors. »

In his intervention, the Vice-Chair, Hon. Idris Wase lamented that on Wednesday almost all shops in Kano state were closed because they don't want to take the risk of collecting old currency and at the end of the day to avoid rejection of old banknotes as legal tender.

He added that a similar situation was happening in several places including the local government of Wase where only one bank operates, adding that the next community was over 40 kilometers away where cow traders will have no ability to access banking services.

While noting that the policy was good on the surface, he however maintained that the short period of implementation has caused major setbacks to the economic activities of millions of Nigerians.

“I believe that it is necessary for the management to go further, that it would be good for the management to make a presentation to Mr. President to see the reasons alongside what we are pursuing with the governor of the CBN “, he urged. .

Hon. Wase who noted that his constituents faced the threat of banditry, where "money paid to bandits in Wase but the account was traced to someone in Katsina State.

According to him, of the bandits arrested in the bush, around 60 million naira and 70 million naira were recovered from some of the bandits. He therefore noted that in order to solve a problem, one must exercise caution so as not to create another problem.< /p>

Meanwhile, depository bank operators across the country who converged on the National Assembly compound, Abuja, expressed their willingness to align themselves with the House of Representatives resolution on the new cash policy, just as they took turns giving details of insufficient disbursement of new CBN naira notes.

Representatives of the banks who spoke at the information hearing held at the initiative of the ad hoc committee chaired by Hon. Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, revealed that between 10% and 70% of the old notes handed over to the apex bank have been handed over to the banks.

For her part, Access Bank representative Hadiza Amburza said, "We pay as much as we do. We collect the money and load it at the counter as quickly as we receive it. not fast. We got about 10 percent of the total money. That's the challenge we have. We're doing our best until the deadline."

Furthermore, Lotus Bank representative Mohammed Abdul said, "On the issue, we have received the new banknotes and returned the old banknotes. However, in the past few weeks, what we have received has been very insufficient. We received an average of N40 million per week for our bank in Abuja.”

For Sterling Bank, its representative, Orlando Umoren, said, “Looking at the matter on the ground, CBN is presenting allocations to banks, whether or not that allocation is enough is a different ball game. As I speak to you, all of our ATMs are dispensing. Allocations are shared. What we received fluctuates. We received a minimum of 150 million naira to share. In Kaduna, N150 million, in Kano we get...