Some commercial banks in Kogi closed down on Wednesday when customers staged peaceful protests over their inability to access money for daily use.

In Lokoja, customers, in their droves, picketed the banks to either change the daily narration of “no money” or close down.

Some of the banks affected include GTB, Unity, Zenith, Access, and Unity Bank, situated along IBB Way, which shut down for the day.

A customer, Ibrahim, told journalists that their protest stemmed from the allegations that banks refused to give or dispense the redesigned naira notes to customers in flagrant disobedience to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s directive.

“You can see how angry most of us are, and it’s just for a singular reason that we can’t access money that we can use to feed our families.

“Today, we have decided that no official of First bank, GTB, Unity, Zenith, Union and Access banks will be allowed to enter his/her offices to work,” he said.

The protester, however, said the officials would only access their banks upon the assurance that customers would receive money.

Another protester, Jummai, said, “it serves them (banks) right today, coupled with the punishment they have been giving us over our own money that we kept with them.”

Reacting on condition of anonymity, a GT Bank official described the situation as “very unfortunate”.

She expressed concern over the wrong notion customers hold against commercial banks regarding the non-availability of the new naira notes.

“What our customers don’t know is that the money we get for our daily transactions is not always enough to go around them.

“As it’s now, we have no option than to stay away from the office today since the customers are tensed and have locked us out,” she lamented.

The situation is different at Polaris, UBA, Eco and Fidelity banks along the same IBB Way, which were opened to customers for business.

It was gathered that the few banks, to some extent, tried to dispense cash to their customers compared to those picketed. 

(NAN)