Sterling Bank Sanctioned By CBN For Hoarding New Naira Notes, Sabotage

Sterling Bank Plc has been accused of sabotaging the efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to make the new naira notes available in the country.

Oluwole Owoeye, an Assistant Director with the apex bank disclosed this in Ado Ekiti on Sunday after CBN officials, on a monitoring duty in the state, discovered loads of new naira notes which the commercial bank failed to load into the Automated Teller Machines, ATM.

The CBN official said the bank had received over N6 million new notes from the CBN for over two weeks but simply refused to load the cash into the ATM machines belonging to the new generation bank.

Recall that the CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele disclosed last week that it was working with security and anti graft agencies in the country to ensure that commercial banks in the country sabotaging the even distribution of the new naira notes are sanctioned accordingly.

Also, President Muhammadu Buhari during his meeting with 36 state governors in the country, accused top officials of some commercial banks in the country of hoarding and sabotaging government’s efforts to ensure that the new notes are made available across the country before the deadline of February 10 set by the CBN to demonetize the old naira notes of N200. N500, and N1000 banknotes.

The CBN has also arrested some commercial bank managers, for hoarding the new notes in the cause of its monitoring exercise in the last few days.

The arrested officials, the apex bank said will be punished accordingly. The chief executives of the culpable banks, sources in the Godwin Emefiele-led government bank, said will also be queried soon.

Speaking after the N6 million new notes were discovered in the Bank’s Ado branch, Owoeye said the bank is one of the commercial banks in the county causing cash scarcity, and frustrating customers and others who need cash to transact their businesses.

In the now viral video the CBN top official said, “I am currently at Sterling Bank, on Bank Road as part of the new naira notes monitoring compliance with the guidelines by CBN. They have N6 million, which they collected from the bank for almost two weeks, they have not disbursed any. They said they are yet to configure their ATMs, I do not know why that and I have brought attention to the penalty clause of N1 million per day, because they have five ATMs here, they have no reason for keeping this money.

“The zonal service manager, Tunde Onipede promised that by 10:00am latest tomorrow (Monday), because I told him by latest 10:00 am I’ll be here and I want to see the machine dispensing this money.”

Last week in Ibadan the Oyo State capital, some commercial banks wee attacked by angry customers who accused their officials of hoarding the new notes. It took security agency’s serious efforts to bring the violent situation undr control, but some ATM machines had already been vandalised by the any mob.

In Lagos also, some angry customers stripped themselves naked in the banking halls after bank officials informed them they were yet to receive new cash allocation from the CBN, which made it impossible for the banks to dispense cash to customers.

Meanwhile, competent sources in the CBN informed the magazine on Monday that the apex bank will step up the monitoring exercise this week with a view to ensure that commercial banks working against government efforts are exposed to Nigerians.

“The CBN has already warned the CEO of all the money banks in the county to ensure that they rein in their staff, as they will be held responsible for their actions. The situation has already got out of hands, the CBN is working hard to bring the scarcity under control, and we will not be shy to shut down bank branches frustrating our efforts, ” an official said today.