Naira Scarcity: What’s Next As Buhari Fails To Meet 7-day Window?

Seven days after pleading with Nigerians to give him one week to end the scarcity of new Naira notes, President Muhammadu Buhari has failed to live up to the promise, leading to calls by members of the Council of State and the leadership of the National Assembly to bring back the old notes.

The Central Bank of Nigeria had late last year introduced a policy of redesigning the Naira and gave an initial deadline of January 31, 2023 to completely phase out the 1000, 500 and 200 Naira notes.

Amid scarcity of the new notes and the inability of some Nigerians to deposit their old Naira in banks, the CBN extended the deadline to February 10, 2023, while President Buhari at a meeting with governors of the ruling All Progressives Congress on February 3 asked for seven days to fix the problem.

The failure to meet the seven-day ultimatum is coming amid reports that the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company has run out of paper and lacks the capacity the print the needed amount of new Naira notes.

According to a report by an online medium, Premium Times, which quotes sources, the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, admitted this to members of the Council of State during its meeting yesterday at the presidential villa, Abuja.

According to the report, the Mint has run out of paper to print N500 and 1,000 notes and is facing supply constraints., with a source adding that the minting company has placed orders with a German firm and De La Rue of the UK (for paper) but the orders are on a long waiting list so cannot be met now.

At this juncture,the question on the lips of many Nigerians is ‘what’s the next step to be taken by Buhari administration to ease the many problems occassioned by this Naira redesign policy?