Rejection of new naira notes attracts N50,000 fine, imprisonment

Nigerians who reject or deface the new naira notes may be at risk of a N50,000 fine or six months’ imprisonment.

The CBN Act of 2007, a copy of which was obtained by The PUNCH, made it a crime for anyone to reject, deface, or counterfeit the naira notes.

According to Section 20(5) of the CBN Act, “A person who refuses to accept the naira as a means of payment is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine of N50,000 or 6 months’ imprisonment.”

Section 21 added, “(1)A person who tampers with a coin or note with or trading in issued by the bank is guilty of an offence and shall on notes and coins imprisonment for a term not less than six months or to a fine not less than N50,000 or to both such fine and imprisonment.

“(2) A coin or note shall be deemed to have been tampered with if the coin or note has been impaired, diminished or lightened otherwise than by fair wear and tear or has been defaced by stumping, engraving, mutilating, piercing, stapling, writing, tearing, soiling, squeezing or any other form of deliberate and willful abuse whether the coin or note has or has not been thereby diminished or lightened.”

The crime of counterfeiting, however, attracts not less than five years of imprisonment.

In an earlier report by The PUNCH, it was disclosed that some of the bank customers refused to collect the new notes for over-the-counter payments.

Confirming the situation, a bank teller in Ogba, Lagos, had told one of our correspondents, “Some customers have been rejecting the new naira notes whenever we give them; they said the new notes would not be collected from them in the market; they prefer the old notes.”

During a recent sensitisation exercise in Abeokuta, the CBN’s Head of the Abeokuta branch, Wahab Oseni, affirmed that the rejection of the naira is a crime, according to news reports.

The Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc recently urged Nigerians to stop experimenting with the new naira.