Nigeria’s Supreme Court on Wednesday suspended the central bank’s Friday deadline to ban the use of the old naira notes, reported The BBC.
In October last year, Nigeria’s CBN introduced redesigned 200, 500, and 1000 naira notes and gave a deadline of 31st January for the use of the old notes.
Late last month, the Central Bank of Nigeria had announced a 10-day extension of the deadline from January 31, 2023, to February 10, 2023 to give more time to the banks to roll out the new notes. The announcement, however, led to cash shortages due to insufficient availability of new notes, protests and some attacks on banks.
The court’s ruling has delayed the federal authorities and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s goal of completely phasing out the use of old 200, 500 and 1,000 naira notes by Friday.
The Central Bank has not yet responded to the court’s ruling, which has been announced ahead of another hearing next week.
Nigeria’s Supreme Court’s decision to suspend the Friday deadline follows a lawsuit filed by three Nigerian state governors seeking to keep these bank notes in circulation a while longer.
On Wednesday, Abdulhakeem Mustapha, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the Kogi, Kaduna and Zamfara state governors, said the process of transition to the new notes was causing political instability.
The note-swapping process is taking place only a few weeks before Nigeria goes to the polls in presidential and parliamentary elections.
The chaos of getting the notes changed has led to concern that it could affect the scheduled elections this month, as many Nigerians do not have bank accounts.
On Wednesday, Nigeria’s election commission has confirmed that the elections would go as planned. More than 93 million voters have been registered to vote in the polls to elect a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari, who is ending his second term in office.
