The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in collaboration with some commercial banks in Jigawa state has employed the service of over 200 agents for currency swapping in an attempt to meet the CBN deadline of 31st of this month.
This was discussed by the CBN director of human resources, Hajiya Amina Habib while addressing newsmen in Dutse, the Jigawa state capital, said she is in Jigawa state to supervise and monitor the cash swapping and circulation of the new currencies in the state.
Hajiya Amina Habib explained that the reason behind involving bank agents is that the central bank noticed that in the rural areas, there are many un-banking communities, and the banking has no physical presence in those areas.
“The importance is that to have an agent bank to banking services. The agents are representing the banks in those communities, they provide the bank services to the people for the opening a bank and accepting money from them and an ability to withdraw”.
She said “the central bank is carrying out massive sensitization nationwide to draw awareness to the new currency and make sure that people accept the new Naira note. So a lot of sensitization is going on by the bank (CBN) and we are aware we need to take care of the people in the rural areas, that is why the bank lunches the cash swap programme”.
The director emphasised that “the cash swap programme is now ongoing across the country in the rural areas. I’m coordinating the one for Jigawa. We do a lot, my team have been going out in term of money trend because the cash swap involves agents, the super agents and sent the funds through the banks”.
According to her the Dutse branch of the central bank has created some teams and going around all the parts of the state and rural areas im-particular monitoring the cash swap programme to ensure success and beating the CBN deadline.
She noted that “as you can see my team are all over, everywhere in the state creating awareness and sensitizing the public and rural dwellers and encouraging people to moped off, they can put money in their bank account, those that un-banking an account would be open for them and deposited the money and latter they will go the respective banks and formalizes the process”.
“For those who are involved in the cash swap, N10,000 is the maximum that they can get under the cash swap programme and anything above that they can place in the bank account, those who are unbanked we encourage them to open a bank account”, Habib disclosed.
Hajiya Amina Habib stated further that “financial inclusion is actually in the increase in terms of the people are coming up and opening a bank account which is very good for the national economy as well”.
The CBN director expressed satisfaction with the way and manner of the programme and commended all the stakeholders for their support and understanding of the success of the programme.