Nigerian Twitter knocks CBN, Emefiele over new naira notes designs
After weeks of anticipation, the new designs for N200, N500 and N1000 notes were unveiled in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, on Wednesday by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Central Bank of Nigeria announced in October that the redesigning was necessary to counter the hoarding of the notes.
“Evidently, currency in circulation has more than doubled since 2015; rising from N1.46 trillion in December 2015 to N3.23 trillion in September 2022. This is a worrisome trend that cannot be allowed to continue,” CBN governor Godwin Emefiele said on October 26.
A couple of weeks later, Amina Abdulmalik, Deputy Director of, Currency Operations Department, CBN, said the redesigning was also needed to reduce counterfeiting, noting that “Nigerians have set up factories and are just chunning out bank notes because those bank notes don’t come back into the banking system.”
However, the new designs launched on Wednesday have been met with widespread condemnation on social media, with one Twitter slamming Emefile for being “out of ideas”. Others commented that the CBN only “bleached” the old designs.
