In virtually all over the country, it has been a mixed tale of suffering and smiling for citizens who are eager to access their hard-earned money but meet the banking halls shut against them.
The automatic teller machines, (ATMs), are either disabled or unable to dispense.
In the few places where the ATMs are working, long queues and endless scrambling going on and if one is patient enough to join one of those crazy queues, the ATM may become empty before it gets to his/her turn. This has drawn the ire of the angry citizen and also pitched him/her against the banks.
The suffering is considered worse in areas where the commercial banks are not available making the people to travel several kilometers to access the nearest one.
In Edo North senatorial district of the state with six Local Government Areas, two of the local government areas lack the presence of commercial banks.
The six local governments in the senatorial districts are Akoko-Edo, Etsako Central, Etsako East, Etsako West, Owan East and Owan West.
Out of the six only Owan West and Etsako Central lacked commercial banks.
As a result of the nonavailability of commercial banks in the localities, residents are, therefore, compelled to travel hundreds of kilometers to the nearest local government before making withdrawals from the ATMs.
Those in Owan West, with headquarters in Sabongida Ora, have to travel as far as Ekpoma, the headquarter of Esan West local government area of Edo Central senatorial district to conduct their banking transactions while their counterparts in Etsako Central, with headquarters in Fugar, make a round trip to Auchi, Etsako West council area.
The plights of the residents of these two local governments have tripled in the past few weeks. They are often faced with the problem of having to join an already overstretched queue at the banks, worsened by the directive of the apex bank, the CBN, that all withdrawals must be through the bank ATMs at the onset.
Much as the citizens of these local government areas have found the CBN directive unsavory, they are also worried about the huge hole left in their pockets by the cost of shuttling to and fro between their places of residence and where the few available banks are located.
In most cases, the travel exerts a lot on them financially, in search of the “elusive” new naira notes.
For instance, given the high cost of living and the attendant energy crisis, it costs between two to N3000 to shuttle to and fro between Fugar and Auchi. And it could even get more disconcerting when at the end of the whole tedious exercise one is unable to either access the ATMs or the banking halls.
Claiming they relied mostly on the POS in their respective domains in doing most of their banking transactions and never really had a cause to visit the banks, they lamented the hardship the naira redesign policy has brought to bear on their lives and urged those in charge of making the new notes available to redouble their efforts and save the people from starvation and potential penury.
