Residents of rural communities across Sokoto State on Friday trooped to cash swap centres facilitated by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to obtain redesigned naira notes.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that CBN sent officials, along with Point Of Sale (POS) owners from commercial banks as super agents, exchanging old currency notes with the new ones at the centres.
NAN checks at Gwadabawa, Kware, Salame, Wamakko, Bodinga, Shuni and Dange communities revealed that agents swapped old notes, up to N10,000 per individual on Thursday.
NAN gathered that the teams visited community heads palaces from where residents were informed about the super agents presence for the operation.
Some residents, Shu’ibu Ibrahim, Yahanasu Bello, Muhammad Kassim and Ma’aruf Shehu, expressed excitement over the programme, saying it brought succour to them.
According to them, the programme eased transportation and long que hardships faced by residents at the Automated Taller Machines (ATM).
The CBN Branch Controller in Sokoto, Mr Dahiru Usman, had allayed the fears of traders, business communities, rural dwellers and others of losing their money for failure to deposit it at the designated banks.
During a series of meetings with amalgamated traders union leaders, Coalition of Non Governmental Organisations and others, Usman assured that measures had been taken to ease the exchange of the notes.
He said CBN had introduced different programmes, including ‘cash swap’ at the rural and underserved areas of the country to boost the collection of the redesigned notes.
Usman added that the programmes were informed by the need to maximise the channels through which the underserved and rural communities could exchange their Naira notes.
The Controller noted that the efforts were to ensure that the distribution of the new currency notes was fair, transparent and evenly spread across the country. (NAN)
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