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CBN, EFCC expand sting operations
From Uche Usim, Abuja
The plight of depositors seeking to withdraw redesigned naira notes has been worsened by touts who now invade commercial banks’ Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to create artificial scarcity.
Their modus operandi is to arrive at the ATM as early as possible, pick numbers, create long queues and sell their slots to impatient customers on the line.
Since a lot of customers, especially Point of Sales operators want to withdraw more than N20,000 daily limit set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) using different debit cards, they buy off the slot of the touts for N500-N1,500 depending on the position on the queue.
This has worsened the plights of ordinary depositors who want to withdraw less than N20,000.
Checks by Daily Sun showed that many customers languished in long queues for hours in search of new notes.
A media consultant, Joe Abraham lamented: “What the touts are doing is what to see when vital commodities are scarce. People take advantage of it.
“One of the touts said he got to a bank in Kuje at 4 am on Monday to ‘take number’ usually given by the bank’s security personnel.
“They take the first 25 slots and wait for customers to stroll in by 7 am. Impatient ones by the slot for N1,500. It’s a cool business for them. Before you know it, they mop up the money in the ATM. It’s crazy really”, he lamented.
Meanwhile, it was gathered that the CBN and security agencies have expanded their sting operations to ensure banks comply with feeding new notes into their system.
