Touts and street urchins may have hijacked the on going Naira scarcity to increase the plight of Nigerian citizens genuinely thronging the various Automated Teller Machines across the country to withdraw cash for their daily activities.
Investigations revealed that the touts now invade commercial banks’ Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to create artificial scarcity and long queues.
Their modus operandi according to our findings was to arrive the ATM points as early as possible, pick numbers, create long queues and sell their slots to impatient customers on the same queue.
Since a lot of customers, especially Point of Sales operators want to withdraw more than the N20,000 daily limit set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) using different debit cards, they buy off the slot of the touts for N500-N1,500 depending on their position on the queue.
This then tends to worsen the plights of ordinary depositors who want to withdraw less than N20,000.
A media consultant, Joe Abraham lamented: “What the touts are doing is what to see when vital commodities are scarce. People take advantage of it.
“One of the touts said he got to a bank in Kuje at 4am on Monday to ‘take number’ usually given by the banks’ security personnel.
“They take the first 25 slots and wait for customers to stroll in by 7am. Impatient ones buy the slot for N1,500. It’s a cool business for them. Before you know it, they mop up the money in the ATM. It’s crazy really”, he lamented.
The CBN and security agencies have expanded their sting operations to ensure banks comply with feeding new notes into their system.
Meanwhile, following the difficulties being faced by people over cash swaps in Ogun State, Governor, Dapo Abiodun, on Monday, paid an unscheduled visit to the Abeokuta branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria to seek relief on the amounts that people can withdraw in exchange for deposits made in commercial banks.
The governor also offered to lend members of his cabinet to monitor cash distribution to banks to ensure that no commercial bank or their agents hoard the new naira notes in the state. Abiodun was received at the Abeokuta CBN office located on the Presidential Boulevard, by the Branch Controller, Wahab Oseni.
He later met with Bankers Forum, made up of managers of commercial banks in the state and extracted a commitment from both the CBN and commercial banks to make cash available to bank customers from Tuesday.
Speaking at the CBN office, Abiodun declared that it was disappointing to see long queues of residents at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), waiting to cash money from the system with so much stress and some not getting enough to meet their immediate needs.
He added that it was humiliating that those who were attended to were paid not more than two thousand naira per transaction.
Abiodun, however, urged the CBN to ensure the availability of new notes at commercial banks for people to withdraw their money.
The governor explained that he was compelled to visit the state branch of the CBN as the “landlord to find out how we can collaborate to ensure that success of the CBN policy on the new notes and currency swap”.
