A Board member( name withheld) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that the new approved naira notes would be printed locally.
The Board member assured that there was no plan to print the proposed new naira notes outside Nigeria.
A board member told newsmen:
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“All the new currency notes are printed in Nigeria by the Nigeria Security, Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC), so I do not envisage printing outside the country.”
However, the board member said he had no idea of the cost of printing the new currencies for now, but said though the cost is
“something that can be accommodated in view of the expected benefits of the re-designed notes.”
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had earlier said it would launch redesigned N1000, N500, and N200 notes soon.
He said the redesign process will effect from Thursday, December 15, 2022.
Emefiele added that the redesigning of Naira notes would help to curb counterfeit notes, as well as hamper ramson payment to terrorists and kidnappers.
But Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki on Thursday read a political meaning to the proposed naira redesign.
Obaseki viewed that the move was a ploy by the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government to sway voters ahead of the 2023 general elections.
He said this at the inauguration of Edo State Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) Women Campaign Council at the presidential campaign secretariat of the party on Sapele Road, Benin, the state capital.
He said:
“The redesigning of the nation’s currency should not be a priority, as the majority of citizens are suffering from hunger, poverty and economic hardship.
“They say we should all bring our naira and give it to them, because they want to change it for us. Is that our priority now?
“Does changing of currency reduce the price of food in the market? They say they want to change our currency, and dollars are going higher every day. We cannot even see dollars again.
“I am an economist and I can tell you categorically that this policy by the CBN and Federal Government has no basis in Nigeria’s economy. There is no reason to do this. The move is purely political, as there is no urgency in changing our currency.”
Edo governor suggested that FG would have rather put urgency “on how to get food for our citizens to remove starvation and hunger from the land.”
He again said:
“The urgency is on how to maintain discipline in our monetary policy. So that we can manage our foreign exchange rate, because we are import dependent.”
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