By Ken Chiwendu
The Senate on Tuesday urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CNN) to extend the deadline for the exchange of old naira notes from the January 31 deadline to July 31, 2023.
The Senate decision comes moments after the Central Bank of Nigeria ( CBN) Governor,Godwin Emefiele at the Monetary Policy Committee ( MPC) meeting in Abuja announced that the January 31 deadline for the exchange of the old naira notes remained sacrosanct.
The CBN had in October last year, said the old naira notes would cease to be legal tender as from January 31 but the Senate in December passed a resolution urging the CBN to extend the deadline to June 30.
However, the scarcity of the new notes in ATM machines and banks a few days to the deadline and worried by the insistence of the apex bank that there would be no such extension, Senator Sadiq Umar moved a motion on the floor of the red chamber on Tuesday demanding the extension to July 31.
When the motion was put to vote in the plenary presided over by the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan,majority of senators, voted overwhelmingly for the extension
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