Customers on Tuesday besieged various commercial banks in the ancient city of Kano to either deposit their old naira notes or get the new notes in order to beat the 31st January Central Bank of Nigeria deadline.
The customers who were seen in long queues around the ATM machines in most of the banks, lamented the failure of most of the banks to provide the new naira notes.
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It was observed that while some ATM machines were operating, many were not functioning as they were deserted.
At the Maiduguri road and Murtala Mohammed Way where there are concentrations of the banks, very few of the ATM machines were dispensing the new naira notes.
It was gathered that in some banks old notes were still being issued to customers withdrawing over the counter, as only some lucky customers were getting the new notes.
Some of the customers who spoke to Punch at First Bank Maiduguri road branch expressed great concern over the non availability of the new ones and the refusal of the banks to give satisfactory explanation on the situation.
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One of the customers who simply gave his name as Lawan said he left his house as early as 7am in order to withdraw only N20,000 but ended up getting only N10,000 due to poor network.
“The only ATM machine dispensing new notes suddenly became faulty while I was trying to withdraw N20,000. So I ended up withdrawing N10,000 after spending about three hours in the queue.
“None of the banks can explain the reasons behind all these happenings because to deposit the old notes or withdraw the new notes is a problem,” Lawan said.
Another customer, Adamu Abdullahi who went to the bank to deposit his old naira notes said he spent more than four hours in the queue before he could deposit the money.
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“I came here around 8:30 am but could not deposit the money until after 4pm due to the long queue of customers,” he said.
As at the time of filing this story many traders have stopped collecting the old naira notes due to the challenges bedeviling the entire process.
