By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The current cash crunch being experienced by Nigerians is not likely to abate soon as most of the money deposit banks visited in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are not attending to customers who want to withdraw cash just as their Automated Teller Machines (ATM) have no cash to dispence too.
Prompt News investigations revealed that most commercial banks visited in the FCT today (Monday) have no cash in their vaults to either give to customers across the counter or load into the ATMs for the public to withdraw.
Among the commercial banks visited today are United Bank for Africa (UBA), Access Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Union Bank, Jaiz Bank, Union Bank and Zenith Bank Plc which had earlier temporarily shut down its activities for fear of attacks, although it claimed to be for other reasons.
Attempt by our reporter to withdraw cash at one of the commercial banks located at Zambezi street in Maitama, Abuja by 9:30am Monday morning proved abortive as the bank’s Supervisor claimed there are no currency notes in the vaults to hand to customers.
According to the officer who pleaded anonymity, the bank has dispensed all the notes it received on Friday and has not received another allocation as at the time of this report.
He also revealed that the bank will not receive any money to give to customers across the counter in the next 24 hours.
Said he: “This branch has no cash to dispense and will not get it from anywhere throughout today (Monday). This is the situation we have at hand. We hope that by tomorrow cash will be given to us to give to customers across the counter or load into our ATMs”.
The situation was the same at three other commercial banks visited in Abuja metropolis this morning as efforts made to assess cash either across the counter or in the ATMs proved abortive because there are no cash to dispense by the banks.
Prompt News reports that most of the ATMs are now deserted as they are not dispensing cash to customers following the inability of the banks to receive cash backing from their headquarters.
Meanwhile, most of the Point of Sales (POS) operators have closed shops because they do not have cash to carry out their transactions, a situation which has aggravated the cash crunch being witnessed by Nigerians.
Madam Abigail Musa who runs POS kiosk at Dakwo, a suburb of Abuja Municipality told Prompt News that she has done business for the past one week following her inability to source for cash to give to customers.
According to her, except the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) floods the banks with the redesigned Naira notes or even the old notes, the cash crunch being experienced in the country will not stop.
