President Muhammadu Buhari's Written Approval

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has insisted that its recently announced plan to issue newly designed naira banknotes is above board and "12 years overdue." This plan was just recently made public. The Nigerian central bank issued a statement saying that it had "obtained the approval of President Muhammadu Buhari in writing to redesign," which appears to be a rebuke directed at the Nigerian minister of finance, Zainab Ahmad, who has publicly questioned the plan.

According to reports, Ahmad told lawmakers a day after the CBN made its unexpected announcement that since she had not been consulted, she was unable to comment "on it as regards merits or otherwise." According to a recent article published by Bitcoin.com News, it is believed that the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) plan to introduce newly designed naira banknotes is what sparked the local currency's parallel market exchange rate plunge, where it tapped a new all-time low versus the dollar of N781:$1.

Those who are opposed to the contentious plan that the CBN has proposed are adamant that if the plan is implemented, the exchange rate for the naira to the dollar could plummet to as low as one thousand naira to one dollar by the end of the month of January in 2023. Despite this, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a defiant statement on October 29, 2022, asking Nigerians to support the policy regarding the redesign of the currency.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has issued an appeal to the people of Nigeria, saying that they should back a project to redesign the country's currency because it is in everyone's best interest. "Anyone who cares about the well-being of the nation ought to discourage the hoarding of significant sums of banknotes outside the vaults of commercial banks," the Central Bank of the United States said.

The Redesign of Currency as a Global Standard

In addition, the CBN mentioned that it had "tarried for too long considering that it had to wait 20 years to carry out a redesign." The bank's earlier claims that the circulation of the redesigned naira is a standard practice that must be carried out every five to eight years are also reiterated in this statement by the central bank of Nigeria.

Beginning on December 15, new banknotes in denominations of 100, 200, 500, and 1,000 naira are going to be introduced into circulation as part of a plan. Nigerians are expected to return the old notes by the end of January 2023. While critics of the currency redesign plan have called on the CBN to extend the deadline or drop the plan altogether, the latest local reports quote President Buhari expressing his support for the move.