The Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CCSOs) has described those criticising the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) deposit and withdrawal cash policy as shady characters who will always try to bring government down.
The group, in a press statement addressed in Abuja at the weekend by the President, Bassey Etuk Williams, said insinuations on the workability of the policy and wrong information being dished out were “coming from those doing shady business and who need to be corrected”.
Bassey said “if the cashless policy is improved upon in furtherance of electronic transactions, the overall charges received from customers will reduce over time as the banks’ overhead charges of dispensing their services will be greatly reduced with time with effective adherence to cashless policy.
“We have listened to various reactions on the directives of deposit and cash withdrawal policy by individuals and corporate organisations re-introduced by the CBN in some states of the federation. Having studied the reasons behind this recent policy, we are duty bound to make concerned observations on the said policies and call for total support from Nigerians, based on the advantages attached to cash-less policy.
“Ever since inception of electronic transfer, we all realised that it’s more secure, less costly and much faster as we have completed transactions unlike when it was all about moving huge sums of cash around.
“We thus use this medium to call on all well-meaning Nigerians to embrace the policy as a means of encouraging cashless policy needed to drive the economy and at the same time separate legitimate transactions from questionable ones, which the electronic transfer will reveal over time.
“We cannot keep doing same thing same way and we expect same result, we all must rise to support this policy and serve as change agents that will propagate the good benefits some of which we mentioned here. A cashless economy will also curb corruption as well reduce the expenses incurred in printing and transportation of currency notes across the states.
“It will also make tax payment easy as we know we have bad record of paying tax as a nation. We thus call on all well-meaning Nigerians to support this policy as a means of stopping economic saboteurs and reduce the overhead cost of currency production which the country always goes through,” he said
