The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday threatened to clamp down on Point of Sale operators for taking advantage of Nigerians of the scarcity of newly printed naira notes in the country.
The apex bank described the PoS operators exploiting Nigerians as fifth columnists and vowed to arrest and prosecute operators found guilty of such acts.
The Director of the Governor’s Department of CBN, Joseph Omayuku while addressing newsmen in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State said the sharp practices were discovered after reviews of the implementation of the policy.
Omayuku accused PoS operators of selling naira notes for naira notes to Nigerians amidst the rejection of online payments by some business operators.
He said, “Further reviews have indicated that it does appear as if fifth columnists are operating in this system, and these fifth columnists, as it appears, are anybody that has PoS access. Several of them have now taken to the unfortunate activity of turning themselves into payment agents.
“So you find out that even next to petrol stations, their agents or PoS operators next to them are there who you will go to, to sell money to you and you take that money to go and buy petrol; and not just petrol stations, in short, everywhere.
“From this week, there will be very sting operations around the country. Because this (selling of naira) is the incentive. The incentive is that they can sell our currency to us, which is not supposed to be. You cannot be selling naira to us.
“The operational arrangement for payment agents is that they take a commission for transactions and this commission is not more than N100 or N200 for transactions of up to N10,000. But we have heard of cases where people are being charged N1,000 or N2,000. This is certainly fraudulent; this is a rogue operation.
“The management of the CBN and the leaders of the country do not subscribe to any logic that will allow people to operate like this. So, the security agencies will be very active this week, going forward.”
He warned those engaged in illegal practices to turn a new leaf and advised members of the public to report perpetrators by contacting the CBN Contact Centre on 07002255226; Telephone Ext: 711025 – 7; contactcbn@cbn.gov.ng and its social media handles.
The CBN official also debunked claims that the existing online platforms were not effective to support a large volume of economic activities, stressing that the challenges associated with the online system “are not as bad as to warrant rejection of transfer payments.”
