Cash crisis: Lagosians seek cash at Supermarkets
By Rasaq Adebayo
As scarcity of cash persists and people are unable to get it from the banks, Nigerians have turned to Supermarket as alternative source of getting cash.
They target the customers who are to pay with cash, collect the cash from them and pay for them with their own card.
This, apart from saving them of lack of cash, also relieves them of paying huge charges to the commercial Point of Sales popularly know as POS operators.
The charges on withdrawal from POS has increased by more than 500%.
This is coupled with fake alerts which is affecting the cashless transaction.
The cash crisis has continued to exacerbate rather than ameliorate as Nigerians face difficulty on daily basis.
Our correspondent who visited some major big Supermarkets in Lagos witnessed how some people approached other customers at the point of payment in those Supermarkets, wooed them to give their cash to them and pay for them with their own cards.
“I entered the Supermarket, after picking some items, I saw someone who wanted to pay with cash I pleaded with him to give me the cash and paid with my card. That’s how I was able to get some cash. I wanted to go hospital but there was no cash on me for transport. I have been without cash for almost three days. I couldn’t go out because I didn’t get cash,” Morenikeji Adebayo told ECHONEWS.
Adedeji said: “We are just suffering in this country. We can’t get the cash from the banks. I spent hours at banks but still could not get the cash until someone tipped me to go to the Supermarket and get cash from those who want to pay with cash. That is how I was able to get the little cash with me.
Another shopper who spoke to ECHONEWS also explained how he was able to get cash at Supermarket to be able to go to work.
Some of the attendants who spoke to ECHONEWS at the Supermarkets visited said they could not stop people from getting cash from others and paying with their cards since the Supermarkets is used to cashless transaction already.
For the past two weeks, people have been suffering from lack of cash as they could not get the cash from the banks despite the fact that many people are used to cash transactions.
There were long queues at the ATM centers as people struggled to get cash.
Following the crisis, the Central Bank of Nigeria, last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in a bid to address the long queues at Automated Teller Machines nationwide directed Deposit Money Banks to begin paying the newly designed notes over the counter to customers immediately not exceeding a maximum of N20,000.
The apex bank also said it would, in conjunction with the Nigerian Police and other agencies, prosecute sellers and abusers of naira.
CBN in a statement signed by its Director, Corporate Communications, Osita Nwanisobi, said: “The CBN has observed with grave concern, the activities of persons who sell the newly redesigned banknotes and those who flagrantly abuse the legal tender by hurling wads of Naira notes in the air and stamping on the currency at social functions.”
“We have equally noticed the queues at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) across the country and an upward trend in the cases of people stocking and aggregating the newly introduced banknotes they serially obtain from ATMs for reasons best known to them. Also worrisome are the reported cases of unregistered persons and non-bank officials swapping banknotes for members of the public, purportedly on behalf of the CBN.”
However, despite the CBN order, people still complained that the banks were not giving out cash.
It was gathered that some banks were giving their customers N5,000 cash over the counter.
