14th December, 2022
The Senate on Wednesday at plenary urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to considerably adjust withdrawal limits in response to public outcry on its proposed weekly withdrawal on cashless policy.
Senate’s resolution followed the adoption of recommendations of the Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Matters on the recent policy of CBN on cash withdrawal limits.
Senate also urged its committee to continue to embark on aggressive oversight of the CBN on its commitment to flexible adjustment of the withdrawal limit and periodically report the outcome to plenary.
It also resolved to support the CBN in the continuous implementation of transformational payments and financial industry initiatives in line with its mandate in accordance with the CBN Act.
Earlier, Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Uba Sani (APC-Kaduna) while presenting the report of the committee said that there are many misconceptions about the cashless policy.
He said that the currency denominations of N5, N10, N50 and N100 remain legal tender and were unaffected by the naira redesign policy and were available for use across the country.
According to him, there are currently no processing fees applied to cash deposits, saying that unlimited amounts can be deposited without charge to enable seamless and unrestricted deposit of notes affected by currency redesign.
Sani said there have been significant achievements recorded in the Nigerian payment system since the cashless policy was introduced in 2012.
However, some senators, before the adoption of the recommendations of the report raised concerns over the planned implementation of CBN’s cash withdrawals limit, while some supported its implementation, saying that it was for the ultimate good of the country.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Senate also at plenary confirmed President Muhammadu Buhari’s nomination of Mrs Aisha Ahmad and Mr Edward Adamu for appointments as Deputy Governors of CBN.