By The president of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan says there is no need for a time limit on the validity of the old naira notes. He spoke on Friday to journalists after a meeting of the council of state, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Lawan said he told Buhari, in a separate meeting, that the National Assembly has resolved that there should be no deadline for the currency swap because of the way it has impacted Nigerians.
“For us in the senate, initially we felt that this policy in the first place is not a bad one. But we also feel there is no need for time limit,” he said.
“Allow the old and the new to co-exist until the old is phase out. So, what is wrong in that? This is not going to be the first country to deploy it that way.
“Other countries have been doing the same thing. And to say that in three months it will be okay? It is not okay, especially in a country like ours where maybe 80, 85, 90 percent of the population have no access to banks.
“When Britain changed their currency, it took them over a year to change and the validity of the old remains and remains a legal tender. So, why ours? We are not cashless yet and that society is cashless already and they needed even more time.
“So, we should have an open-ended time but what will make it quick is for us to have more of the new currencies and then they co-exist with the old ones until the old dies a natural death.”
