By Tunde Sholanke
The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise CPPE,has implored the Central Bank of Nigeria,CBN to allow old notes to be deposited at the commercial banks in the country.
Chief Executive Officer of CPPE,Dr.Muda Yussuf,who conveyed the plea in a statement on Sunday,said the development was necessary in order to ease the current pains and ordeal of returning the old notes by Nigerians.
He added that the process should also be simplified to accommodate millions of rural dwellers, the informal sector players, the over 30 million unbanked Nigerians and several millions who are not literate.
According to him,the current guidelines which require filling of forms on the CBN portals, generating codes does not reckon with millions of Nigerians that seek to return their old notes who are not literate and rural dwellers who don’t have access to internets.
He added:”They are Nigerians and are entitled to a fair consideration in the implementation process. Most of them are women, microenterprises and small businesses contributing immensely to employment, poverty reduction and social stability at the bottom of the economic pyramid of our country.
“It is bad enough that their lives and livelihoods have been terribly disrupted and disoriented. We plead with the CBN to review its processes in the interest of fairness, justice and social inclusion”.
“The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise is concerned about the conflicting directives emanating from the CBN on where to deposit the old currency notes – whether the commercial banks, or Central bank. This confusion is inflicting additional pains on already traumatized millions of innocent Nigerians seeking to return the old notes.
“Amid the chaos which the badly implemented policy has created, it is evidently impractical for the CBN offices to properly handle this process of receiving old currency notes which are still in abundance in the hands of milions of Nigerians. There is only one branch of the CBN office in each state of the federation and the FCT”
“It is practically impossible for the CBN to manage this process without subjecting our citizens to another round of harrowing experience. The experience and images and disorderliness of the past few days at the CBN offices graphically illustrates this position”
