Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday, said that the solution to the rising incidences of fake Naira notes in the country is in the redesigning of the currency.
Sanusi explained that currency redesigning was supposed to be a routine exercise carried out every seven or so years, and regretted the rejection of the idea of N5,000 notes proposed by the apex bank.
The CBN governor spoke when he honoured the invitation of Chukwudi Jones-Onyereri led House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency to explain the source of the fake naira notes allegedly being dispensed by the Automated Teller Machines of some commercial banks.
Sanusi stated that the global practice was for countries to redesign their notes after a few years in order to beat counterfeiters.
He explained further, “One of the reasons we wanted to have a restructuring or the redesign of the currency a few months ago was because, as explained, many of our notes have been in existence for upward of eight or even 10 years.
“Now, the best practice is that within a period of five to eight years, you redesign the currency, because after that period, counterfeiters tend to catch up.”
He, however, told the lawmakers that counterfeiting was still low per one million notes in the country.
“Even at that, Nigerian notes, in terms of what we see as counterfeit and processing, the percentage is very low. We had about 3.9 pieces per one million notes in 2007; six pieces in 2008; 8.4 pieces in 2009; 7.4 pieces in 2010; 5.4 pieces in 2011; and 8.4 pieces in 2012 of the notes processed were counterfeit,” Sanusi explained.
Source: NCW
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