The protesters blocked Marina Road on Lagos Island, chanting “All we are saying, give us new notes.”
A group under the auspices of the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for Good Governance (CCSGG) has staged a protest on Thursday in Lagos State over the scarcity of Naira notes.
The protesters blocked Marina Road on Lagos Island, chanting “All we are saying, give us new notes.”
In the video that surfaced on social media, the protesters accused banks of working against the redesigned policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), thereby making life difficult for ordinary Nigerians.
Etuk Williams Bassey, the president of CCSGG, who led the protest said the organisations that make up the coalition are unhappy with how banks are responding to the CBN’s guidelines regarding the new naira notes.
He said the coalition has chosen to support the CBN to make sure banks comply with the instructions from the apex bank.
He said: “We gathered here today to show our unalloyed solidarity to the CBN governor and President Buhari on the new currency note policy that has come to stay.
“From the time of the introduction of the new naira notes we have seen saboteurs working against the policy via several collaborative efforts to derail the entire process.
“We are grateful for the unreversed position taken by the CBN governor with support from Mr. President on the policy. It is on record that the last time we embarked on such policy was 19 years ago, and it can only be made possible with a determined leader as exemplified in the Governor of CBN with full support from Mr. President.
"We are in front of Wema Bank, we just left UBA, we are going to all the headquarters of various banks we have in Nigeria. The new notes belong to all of us, we have gone to ATMs, we cannot access the new notes.
"We have gone to banks, we cannot access it. We heard that the Central Bank of Nigeria had made the new notes available to the banks.
"That is why the civil society leaders have taken it upon themselves to storm various banks to tell them to stop suffering Nigerians. Nigerians have suffered enough.”
The majority of the banks have their headquarters domiciled in Marina, Lagos Island.
Similarly, some youths protested against the current hardship in Nigeria at Ife Garage in Ondo City, Ondo State.
This was made known by a Facebook user who posted, "Happening now in Ondo City (Ife Garage). Youths are protesting against the current hardship in Nigeria.”
Some of the placards displayed read ‘Poverty, fuel crisis, unemployment, hunger,’ ‘Stop the hike on our PMS, and ‘The famine is killing the innocent’.
Economic and social activities were grounded on Wednesday in Enugu, the Enugu State capital, as residents also took to the streets to protest against the high cost of fuel and scarcity of new naira notes in banks.