Business outfits in Imo state, especially Owerri, the state capital, have stopped collecting old Naira notes, insisting that the CBN governor’s last official statement on the deadline(10th February, 2023) given for the withdrawal of old notes has not changed.
While going round to monitor the situation, Thursday, our correspondent gathered that some hotels, pharmacies and supermarkets in town have on their own, declared the old Naira notes as illegal tender, telling their customers to disregard the so-called intervention by the Supreme Court and some politicians on the issue.
They, however, assured that if the CBN decides to extend the deadline, they would comply.
Meanwhile, the long queues at Automated Teller Machine (ATM) centres of commercial banks are yet to disappear as customers wait patiently till 8 and 9pm to collect the new notes before they go home on a daily basis. This has continued to pose a threat to the accessibility of the new notes.
