Enugu Traders Reject old N500, N1,000 Notes Despite Court Order

Traders in Enugu State have continued to reject the old naira notes for transactions despite a Supreme Court order validating them as legal tender.

The traders while speaking with newsmen insisted that they were yet to receive directives from the Central Bank of Nigeria which is the appropriate authority to give the order to start collecting the old notes again.

A resident of Achara layout, Miss Gloria Okoroafor, said that a tricycle rider, who brought her home refused to collect the old notes from her recently.

Okoroafor said, “The tricycle rider said that it’s only the CBN that could give Nigerians the permission to collect it but it had yet to give the order.”

Another tricycle rider, Uche Ossai, said he had not started collecting the old notes because he would find it difficult to spend them as fuel stations were still rejecting them as well.

Jude Okoye, a provision shop owner at Mayor Market, said he preferred his customers to pay him electronically than to receive the old naira notes from them.

A salon owner, Jacinta Nweke, said that the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital refused to collect the old naira notes from her as payment for her hospital bills.

“When I went to the UNTH to pay for my hospital bill after seeing the doctor, they refused to collect the old notes from me, telling me that they had not received the directive from the appropriate authority yet,” she said.