By Dada Ahmed in Lokoja.
There was a maldrama on Saturday at a restaurant at Ganaja village,a suburb of Lokoja kogi State, as a middle aged restaurant owner “detained” two of her customers for hours for their inability to pay her in new naira for the two plates of food eaten.
One of the victims,a re-wire, who preferred to remain anonymous, in an interview with The Reporters, in Lokoja said he and his colleague were at the restaurant to eat a plate of fufu each with two meat at the a cost of N900.
He said:” After we we finished eating the food, I gave the madam operating the restaurant N 2,000 old naira as payment for the two plates of food we eat, expecting her to give me N200.
Rather than giving me the balance, she retorted,”Are you not aware that we don’t accept old naira notes as payment for our services again?
The re-wire said when another customer reminded the restauranteur that the old notes remain legal tender until January 31,2023, she insisted that the two customers must pay her in new naira or remain detained.
“We thought that the madam was joking but she insisted we must pay with new notes before we could leave her restaurant or we begin to wash plates as an atonement for the food we ate.
“After some 30 minutes or so, another customer who is familiar with the restauranteur, intervened to bail us with a promise to pay her later in new notes.
Our Correspondent reports that the effects of scarcity of new naira in Lokoja and its environs, heightened on Saturday with many residents complaining bitterly over their inability to execute some critical social and economic activities.
This is especially in the case of purchasing of food stuffs, as market women and men rejected the old naira as a means of business transaction.
Many customers, who trooped to various banks in Lokoja to withdraw money from ATM said they could not do due to mammoth crowd among other inconveniences.
At a point in one of the banks, the ATMs suddenly stopped with customers groaning with long faces.
Those who resorted to patronise Point of Sale(PoS) to withdraw money , told our correspondent that they paid N500 charge to withdraw N 5,000 new naira instead of the normal N100 charge among other higher charges.
They called on the Central Bank of Nigeia(CBN) to harken to plea by the Senate and other Nigerians and institutions to extend the January 31 deadline during which old N200,N500 and N1,000 will cease to be legal tender in the country.