Commercial activities badly affected in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, as traders, food vendors and other businesses rejected old currency despite new naira not being visible.
Tribune Online gathered that as the month ended and civil servants were paid salaries, workers and other people spent nights and days at commercial banks’ Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) in the city.
Further checks by Tribune Online in the State indicated that hundreds of people queue to withdraw from ATMs while old notes are been rejected by traders and most of the business people ahead of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) January 31 deadline.
Local markets, traders, food vendors other small and medium businesses are virtually shut down which consequently throws families into untold hardship.
Going round the state, people seem confused as nowhere to get new note to feed their families while many lamented how the CBN policy is unfriendly to rural communities.
One Bashari Kura, a grain businessman, narrated how he spent two days at an ATM point to get money for buying grains at local markets as old Naira notes are no longer accepted there.
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According to him, “I have been on the queue for two days but I only able to get N100,000, while I need N2 million, as usual, to go to Soro market in Bauchi to buy rice from local farmers”.
“My account is individual, the withdrawal limit cannot give me access to the amount I needed, while my business partners (local farmers) have no bank account and literacy to accept transfer, so we are all in unprecedented dilemma,” he emphasised.Â
Kabiru Danjuma of Maitaidau town Dutse local government was found standing at ATM cue very exhausted and furious as he spent more than 12 hours without getting the new note to feed his children”
“This CBN policy is very disgusting, unfriendly and unfair to us electorate who voted this APC government into power.
“The new naira note is not even available, I don’t have it, for three days now I can’t feed my children talkless of paying for their daily transportation fair to school. Please Baba Buhari we beg you in the name of God to reconsider the extension of the deadline for old note,” Kabiru Danjuma stated.
It was observed that only ten local governments out of 27 in the State have functional banks, the rural communities are grown into untold hardship as they lack access to any financial institution for exchanging their old note with new ones.
