Naira redesign: Give us three month to move naira to the bank – Miyetti Allah tells CBN

• Miyetti Allah confront CBN to extend the deadline for the naira redesign
• They complain that they lost their money due to the policy’s impromptu nature of execution.

The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MCBAN) leadership has requested that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) extend the deadline for the circulation of the naira redesign by three months so that its members will have more time to deposit their current currencies in the banks.

Gidado Siddiki, the association’s leader in the South-East, stated yesterday in Awka that the extension would allow the group’s members, who live primarily in bushes and forests due to the nature of their grazing business, to properly convert their savings into newly designed naira notes in order to prevent significant losses.

The revised currencies will go into circulation on December 15, 2022, according to the CBN.

While expressing their full support for the new policy, Siddiki recalled that many of his members who were in their grazing settlements in the country’s rural areas at the time of the announcement of a similar policy in 1985 lost their money due to the policy’s impromptu nature of execution.

He said: “The cattle breeders could not meet up with the time frame given then by the apex bank as the two weeks given was not enough for them to meet up.

“As a result, the majority of the herders lost their life savings because many of them do not have bank accounts and therefore do not keep their money in the banks. Their normal practice is to keep and protect their money wherever they are.

“We cannot fight or reverse the government policy as law-abiding citizens of Nigeria, but we are only appealing to the CBN to help us extend the deadline for another three months to enable the leadership of Miyetti Allah to  reach out properly to those living in out-of -communication areas across states of the federation.”

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Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, yesterday, disclosed that the number of governors being monitored by the commission for alleged money laundering has increased beyond the three it earlier mentioned.

Bawa spoke to reporters at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari. The EFCC boss, however, declined to give a specific figure, saying he wouldn’t want to be misquoted.

The anti-graft czar had, recently, hinted that the commission was keeping an eye on three governors over alleged money laundering, following Federal Government’s plan to redesign and replace some naira denominations.

He commended the move to redesign the naira notes, describing it as a significant step in the country’s fight against financial crimes and other forms of corruption.

He added that the intervention was an opportunity for the government to regain control of the flow of cash in the country and appealed to politicians to prosecute their campaigns without using illegitimate funds.

This came as the leader of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Southeast zone, Gidado Siddiki, appealed to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to extend the deadline for circulation of the redesigned notes by three months.

Siddiki said an extension would enable members of the association, who live predominantly in forests, to bring out their savings and change them.

He made this known during a chat with reporters, yesterday, saying: “They can’t meet up with the timeframe given by the apex bank. The two weeks are not enough. Many of the herders do not have bank accounts; they keep and protect their money locally.

“We cannot fight or reverse government’s policy, as law-abiding citizens. We are only appealing to CBN to extend the deadline by three months, to enable the leadership of Miyetti Allah to reach out adequately to those living in out-of-telecommunication areas across states of the federation.”