Naira Scarcity Is Human Rights Abuse – HURIWA

Civil Rights Advocacy group: HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has accused the Central Bank of Nigeria of serial human rights violations through its deliberate and systemic failure to promote the scarcity of the naira.

HURIWA said the intolerable spread of severe scarcity of the Naira notes in the commercial banks may also be a scam organised by the CBN, the commercial banks, and their POS foot-soldiers to maximise profits by attending to large numbers of dissatisfied bank customers who are starved of their deposits by their banks in the guise that there is no sufficient quantity of cash supplied to them by the CBN.

HURIWA maintains that the legal mandates and obligations of the Central Bank of Nigeria include the issuance of legal tender currency in all of Nigeria; maintain external reserves to safeguard the international value of the legal tender currency; promote a sound financial system in Nigeria and to act as banker and provide economic and Financial advice to the Federal Government.

HURIWA said the persistent and intentional scarcity of the Naira notes all across the nation and the illegal rationing of the available Naira notes by the commercial banks, demonstrates the appalling institutional and bureaucratic rot inside of the Central Bank of Nigeria just as the Rights group called on the Governor of the CBN Mr. Olayemi Michael Cardoso to put to an end this serial and provocative human rights abuses being suffered by customers of commercial banks who can’t find enough cash for their transactions.

“HURIWA is therefore worried that despite the CBN’s directives to the banks to continue to issue, accept old and redesigned naira banknotes, scarcity of the local currencies has persisted. From Lagos to Abuja, Calabar to Kaura Namoda, HURIWA has observed that banks continued to ration the naira notes to customers in the banking halls, while Automated Teller Machines were programmed to dispense limited cash.”

Affirming that the scarcity of the naira was deliberate, HURIWA said that it inquired from some high level officials of many banks in the nation’s capital why there was no cash for withdrawal, and they said the banks did not load cash into the machine.

Even more, ATM’s were dispensing maximum of N5,000 to non-bank customers, while customers of the bank could withdraw up to N20,000.

“Any revolution of the hungry and dying masses will endanger the National security of Nigeria. This is why the President must act swiftly to force the CBN to carry out their legal mandates efficiently and ensure that adequate volumes of the legal tender of currency are made available to commercial banks and their customers.”

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