Against the race to beat the deadline given by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for old naira notes to be returned to banks, making way for the circulation of the redesigned N200, N500 and N1,000 notes, Nigerian banks announced Friday they will run weekend operations.

The banks said their branches nationwide will be open to receive and change old naira notes, in a bid to help their customers beat the January 31 deadline.

The CBN had introduced sensitization campaigns to ensure that rural dwellers meet the deadline. The apex bank has sent agents to remote places across the country to help those who lack access to financial inclusion swap their old naira notes for the new ones.

But the challenge remains in urban areas too, mainly due to scarcity of the new naira notes. As of Friday, some banks ATMs were still dispensing the old naira notes. Many bank customers also said they were issued old naira notes through over-the-counter withdrawal.

These come on the heels of CBN’s reiteration that the deadline will not be extended.

To help those who still have the old notes, the banks said they will be available to receive deposits from customers on Saturday and Sunday.

“In line with our drive to always put You First, our branches nationwide will be open this Saturday, 28 January 2023 and Sunday, 29 January 2023 to receive your old Naira notes from 10 am – 2 pm,” First Bank said in a message to customers, adding that there will be no charges for cash returned or paid into customers accounts within the period.

Similarly, UBA promised that its branches will be in operation to attend to customers this weekend.

GTBank is another commercial bank to make the announcement to its customers. The bank, in a message to account holders, urged them to “save time! Avoid the last-minute rush by depositing your old Naira notes today at any of our branches.”

“Our branches will be open on Saturday January 28 and Sunday January 29, 2023 from 10.00am to 3.00pm to receive your cash deposits only,” it said.

The CBN introduced the new naira notes late last year as part of its efforts to mop up excess old notes in circulation, which is believed to be exacerbating Nigeria’s inflation. The central bank governor Godwin Emefiele lamented that the amount of the old naira notes in circulation rose from N1.4 trillion to N3.2 trillion in seven years.

However, the implementation of the new policy has suffered setbacks due to poor circulation of the new naira notes. Empty ATMs have marked the exercise in its final days, creating concern as Nigerians seek the redesigned naira notes to spend. In a few ATMs dispensing the new notes, withdrawal is limited to N20,000 per day for individuals.

The CBN has accused banks of hoarding the new notes, threatening to sanction anyone caught doing so. Based on this, the major challenge to the implementation of the new CBN’s policy is said to be reliant on the circulation of the new naira notes, not on deposits of the old notes into banks. Nigerians say commercial banks should focus on making sure that the redesigned notes are available to their customers.

We’re now in the AI-first era, out of just the mobile-first one – and ChatGPT is ahead. That takes me back to those days when one had to buy every piece of device to assemble a computer: the motherboard, RAM, HDD, etc. When all was done and coupled, you needed the BIOS/firmware to come up so that your boot disk could pick from there, making it possible to begin the installation. Few more steps, you will see “Windows is installing…” as you’re now at the operating system level.

Just like that,  you have moved from the machine language to the assembly language to the human-level language. Happily, your applications will begin to run in ways that everyone can understand; the DOS commands are masked and the computer is ready for use.

Fast forward today, you buy a new computer, you charge it for a few minutes to get juice, you press a button and everything happens at once: no RAM fix, no startup disk, and absolutely nothing required. They have masked everything and taken users straight to the human-level language’s application layer.

That takes me to the hacks many are doing now to get ChatGPT to work on many things like WhatsApp. It seems like the decades-old experiences of coupling and installing things in computers. But I will say, wait for 3-4 years, the geeks of today, who have APIs advantages the people of old time did not have, to streamline things.

Yet, be careful with those GitHub things before you install your “future” away!

Update: as I was writing this piece, Intel which was making most of the microchips used during that time came to mind. These days, Intel is struggling:

A slow computer market continues to hurt Intel’s bottom line. The chipmaker lost US$664 million in the fourth quarter and reported about $14 billion in revenue, off 32% from the same period last year and below Wall Street estimates of $14.5 billion. The company is reeling from both a post-pandemic drop in chip demand and a pullback in consumer spending. It’s also struggling to keep pace with competing Asia-based chipmakers, The Wall Street Journal notes. Intel’s stock tumbled 10% after the earnings miss. Intel doesn’t expect a comeback anytime soon, forecasting US$10.5 billion to $11.5 billion in sales for the current quarter. Analysts were expecting US$13.9 billion. (LinkedIn News)

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: Yeah, the advice is awesome : “Yet, be careful with those Github things before you install your” future” away! ”

Apart from the few repositories on Github that offer this integration, a few ready-made extensions have also been made for this purpose. We need to be careful as we accept this advances, else, our data will be at risk!

Comment 2: “Yet, be careful with those GitHub things before you install your “future” away!”
Well stated! Funny though.

Comment 3: I’ve spent the last one month trying to hack my way through this, I was able to integrate it using #Twilio Api as the only available option for now, however in few months time, I’m expecting more market dominator from other api competitor and providers.

The election petitions tribunal has nullified the election of Osun State governor Ademola Adeleke, declaring his opponent, the past governor of the state, Adegboyega Oyetola, the winner of the July 16 2022 election.

Oyetola had approached the tribunal after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s candidate the winner of the election. Oyetola, who was defeated as incumbent, alleged that the election was marred by irregularities, including over-voting, which took place in several polling units in the state.

Based on these claims, the electoral tribunal annulled the election of Adeleke, declaring the All Progressive Congress Oyetola the winner. Justice Tetsea Kume held that INEC did not comply substantially with the constitution and the provisions of the Electoral Act.

However, the verdict has triggered mixed reactions across the country, with supporters of Adeleke taking to the streets in protest. Adeleke has also criticized the judgment, describing it as “miscarriage of justice.” The disappointed governor said he will challenge the ruling at the Appeal Court while urging his supporters to remain calm.

“I call on our people to remain calm. We will appeal the judgment and we are sure justice will be done. Let our people be reassured that we will do everything possible to retain this widely acclaimed mandate,” the governor said in a statement signed by his spokesman, Olawale Rasheed, on Friday.

Adeleke criticized the resolution of the over-voting question in favor of Oyetola, describing it as “an unfair interpretation against the will of majority of voters.”

Also, reacting to the judgment, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) described it as a “black market purchased judgment.”

In a statement issued on Friday by the Co-National Spokesperson for CUPP, Mark Adebayo, the coalition said it’s however optimistic that Adeleke will eventually get justice.

“We are not perturbed because justice will eventually be done on this case. The same way that fuel scarcity is biting hard across the country and motorists have to resort to the black market to buy fuel is the same way that we consider this judgment as a black market purchased judgment that we are confident will eventually be overturned by higher courts.

“It is a temporary attempt to rob the Osun State people of their sovereign will and the judicial processes through its remedial mechanisms will do real justice to correct this anomalous injustice in the name of judgment. That it was a split decision judgment says a lot about its lack of merit.

“The mandate willfully given by the Osun State people to Governor Adeleke remains intact and any attempt to steal it will fail woefully,” the CUPP said.

The tribunal’s verdict has added to the growing number of times that the courts have to decide the outcome of an election in Nigeria. The trajectory has been decried by democracy advocates, who expressed concern that it is hurting the essence of democracy. They said if it is not curtailed, the outcome of elections will no longer be determined by the will of the people.