For the past few days, I have been very careful not to have excess old naira notes I won't be able to spend before the initial deadline on the 31st of this month.
My transactions have been mostly through the online mobile app. Most sellers in my locality no longer collect old notes. Yesterday we almost went to bed with hunger when the mobile bank's network was so bad that we could not transfer to those provisions stores. Our saving grace was our good customer relationship with them so that we could shop for groceries and pay today when the app network gets better.
And today I had to visit the main market closest to us before I could shop for our monthly food items, as those in my area do not want old notes.
Only when I reached the market I was told that most of the sellers are not collecting bank transfers as they fear that their networks are not reliable. Only the good thing is they still collect the old notes, that was how I was able to do my food shopping today.
Interestingly, by the time I got home, the news of the extension of spending the old notes broke out. The exchange of the old notes for the new ones has been extended to the tenth of February. Hmmmmm, why now? after putting the masses through lots of hardships. This is a question for the CBN Governor and his team I think.
I think the extension is very much necessary as the new note has not been circulated at all. This will give the CBN adequate time to make sure the commercial banks have enough new notes to load their ATM. People are complaining bitterly about how they could not access the new note through the ATM as of today. All the POS operators I have spoken to, share the same tales of how they found it extremely difficult to have access to the new naira notes after depositing the old ones.
People also seem to forget that even after the deadline one can still deposit the old note to the CBN in exchange for the new notes only that one can no longer spend it as a means of exchange for goods and services.
After all the stress in the market shopping for our monthly foodstuffs, I guess I deserve to prepare my favorite vegetable rice as a kind of well-done girl.
We now have 12 days to the last deadline and I hope that before that time we Nigerians can carry out our various naira notes transactions without the fear of being caught up with the deadline. The inflation is hitting hard enough, we cannot afford more suffering.
If you are a Nigerian reading this, how are you copping at your end?
POS image source and the rice image is mine