The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, has said that Point of Sale agents who charge above N200 for the CBN cash swap programme will be arrested and jailed when caught.
He said this on Tuesday during a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the monetary and currency redesign policy of the bank.
He said, “The situation is substantially calming down since the commencement of over-the-counter payments to complement ATM disbursements and the use of super-agents.
“There is, therefore, no need to consider any shift from the deadline of February 10.”
We reported earlier that the Supreme Court had restrained the Federal Government from implementing the February 10 deadline for the currency swap.
A seven-man panel of the apex court led by Justice John Okoro, in a unanimous ruling, granted an interim injunction restraining the Federal Government, the Central Bank of Nigeria and commercial banks from implementing the Friday terminal date for the old naira notes.
Also, The International Monetary Fund, last week, counselled the CBN to extend the February 10 deadline for swapping old naira notes with the redesigned ones.
The IMF gave the counsel in the wake of the challenges faced by Nigerians across the country over the banknote swap process.
The IMF said in a statement, “In light of hardships caused by disruptions to trade and payments due to the shortage of new banknotes available to the public, in spite of measures introduced by the CBN to mitigate the challenges in the banknote swap process, the IMF encourages the CBN to consider extending the deadline, should problems persist in the next few days leading up to the February 10, 2023 deadline.”