FRI. 03 MARCH 2023-theGBJournal | Many bank customers are skeptical the ruling today by the Supreme Court of Nigeria that old N200, N500 and N1000 remain in circulation till December 31st, 2023 will help ease the devastating Naira crunch currently experienced by households nationwide.
When the G&BJournal correspondent in Lagos asked a bank branch manager what her outlook is for the crunch, she said ‘’I don’t see any quick change for the better, not in the coming week and certainly not tomorrow. The CBN is still the problem. They haven’t given us cash to dispense.’’
Many Customers also doubt the Supreme Court ruling will ease their frustration in the near term.
‘’No bank has cash, and they genuinely don’t have. I have close friends in top management positions in some of our banks, and the picture they paint is pathetic,’’ one senior executive of a small scale business in Lagos said. ‘’They are all suffering from the ineptitude of the CBN policy,’’ he said.
As at 2pm today, most banks’ branches were already shut for business while those still opened have no cash to dispense to customers.
The Automated Teller Machine (ATM) of all of the banks visited are empty, and those destroyed at the onset of the cash crunch are yet to be fixed.
Meanwhile, PoS operator are having a field day, trading the Naira at absurd margins to desperate customers.
‘’I bought the money, and I have to recover my margins. I didn’t get it from the bank. I bought it,’’ Linda (not real mae) a PoS operator told the G&Bjournal.
The Supreme Court nullified the Federal Government’s Naira redesign policy, declaring that it contravened provisions in the 1999 Constitution.
The Supreme Court, in their ruling read by Justice Emmanuel Agim, submitted that the preliminary objections by the defendants (the Attorney General of the Federation, Bayelsa and Edo States) are dismissed as the court has the jurisdiction to entertain the suit.
The Judge while citing Section 23(2)1 of the Constitution, held that the dispute between the Federal Government and the states must involve law or facts.
According to court, the policy has led to some people engaging in trade by barter in this modern age in a bid to survive.
‘’The President’s disobedience of the February 8 order, is a sign of dictatorship,’’ the Supreme Court concluded.
The Court also chastised the President for not consulting with the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the National Council of State and the National Economic Council (NEC) before directing the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) TO ‘’unlawfully’’ introduce the new Naira notes.
Sixteen States of the Federation instituted the suit to challenge the legality or otherwise of the policy that was introduced by the CBN in late 2022.
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