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Customers’ woes persist as banks lack cash

By Sade Adewale
Jimoh Ahmed
Samuel Edu &
Adedotun Aderoboye

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Reprieve is yet to come the way of people across Ondo State who in the last two months have been keeping vigils at banks’ premises over cash crunch. 

It was the same old story of insufficient cash yesterday at the banks despite the Central Bank of Nigeria,CBN’s promise of flooding the banks with the old N500 and N1000 notes to ease the suffering of the people.

Investigation by The Hope revealed that customers who had trooped to the banks as early as 5am in anticipation of getting cash yesterday were disappointed and frustrated even as Automated Teller Machines, ATMs did not dispense money.

The Central Bank of Nigeria on Wednesday had announced that it would release all N1,000, N500 in its custody to Deposit Money Banks, DMBs, immediately.

This decision was expected to end months of hardships and pains Nigerians have been going through.

The few customers who succeeded in accessing cash from a new generation bank got the maximum of N20,000 each.

Narrating his ordeal, President, Nigeria Association of Small Scale Industrialist, Ondo State chapter; Mr Great Seyi Akintunde opined that the hardship imposed by government’s cashless policy is on the increase.

Seyi who noted that contrary to the assumption that there would be enough money in circulation after the just concluded elections, lamented that the situation is rather getting worse with no hope in sight.

“Personally, I have been moving about since 4:56am today and I have visited nine different banks, it will shock you to know that out of all the banks, I was only able to get N5,000.

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“I just pray and hope that things get better in the next couple of days because we cannot continue like this.

“I hope the CBN will live up to its promise as they said earlier that more old notes will be released into circulation.”

Bank customers in Ondo city who had besieged some banks as early as three am so as to be among the first to make withdrawals got the shock of their lives.

It was gathered that virtually in all the banks, their ATMs were not dispensing cash, while some customers were lamenting the scarcity of both the old and new naira notes.

A bank customer who gave his name as Folarin Akinwumi told The Hope that for three days, he had been returning to bank ATMs to make withdrawals but had not been successful.

Akinwumi said, “today will make it the fourth time I will come to the bank. I left my house by 4 am so that I could make withdrawals. Unfortunately, by the time I got to First Bank ATM, over 100 people were already there.

 “The people that came before me had already started picking numbers according to the time they came. At 4 am, I was number115 and when the bank started work by 8 am, they will tell us there is no money but if you want to lodge a complain, you have to come in according to your number.”

Also speaking, Mrs Bisi Oyinade said Nigeria is at war and when there is war, nothing works, and we don’t have money to transport ourselves back home from work, saying this is telling on us and our jobs.

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Some commercial banks in Owo, Ikare Akoko and Akungba, in the Ondo North District, said there were long queues at ATMs and huge crowd at the banks in the area while POS operators still charge between N150 and N200 for withdrawal of N1000.

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