Sterling Bank Hoards Six Million New Naira Notes

One of the monitoring teams of the Central Bank of Nigeria, has accused the branch of Sterling Bank in Ado Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State of hoarding new Naira notes it had collected for almost two weeks, claiming that their automated teller machines were not yet configured.

In a trending video on Sunday, a deputy director of the CBN, who identified himself as Owoeye said that there was no excuse for keeping the cash.

He said, “I’m currently at Sterling Bank as part of this monitoring compliance with the guidelines by CBN. They have six million which they have collected from the bank for almost two weeks. They have not dispensed any. They said they are yet to configure their ATM.

“I don’t know why. I have brought their attention to the penalty clause of one million per day. They have five ATMs. They don’t have any reason for keeping this money.”

Nigerians have been facing a lot of hardship over the scarcity of the new Naira notes in recent days.

In a statement, the bank said “We would like to formally state the facts surrounding our branch in Ado Ekiti.

“The Naira notes referenced were received prior to the re-configuration of the branch’s Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to dispense the 200 Naira denomination.

“On January 23, 2023, a regulatory official visited our branch in Ado-Ekiti and the vault contained N 6,000,000 in N 200 denominations.

“During the visit, the official observed that we had ran out of N1,000 and N500 notes on that day and were unable to load the N200 as the ATMs had not yet been configured to dispense N200 notes.

“At the time of the visit, the subsisting instruction was that the newly designed notes were not to be dispensed over the counter.

“All our ATMs have been dispensing the available quantities of the N1000 and N500 denominations of the newly designed currency as received since the commencement of the policy. We have also successfully reconfigured our ATMs nationwide to dispense N200 notes.

“All denominations can now be withdrawn from our ATMs and over the counter in line with regulatory pronouncement on February 2, 2023.

“We hereby confidently assure the public that the branch was not hoarding any funds and that Sterling remains at the forefront of ensuring that this exercise is a resounding success.

“Together, we will all overcome this inconvenience and come out stronger.”

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